Christina Rossetti, the poetess of Victorian England, wrote the sonnet "Remember“ in 1849, and published it first in "Goblin Market“ and Other Poems in 1862. In this short essay, I will first try to name sonnet‘s meter, analyse its rhyme and show how the rhyme relates to the content of the sonnet, indicate its theme or themes, and name some examples of figurative language used in sonnet.

"Remember“, without any dilemma, is sonnet with Italian form. It is written in iambic pentameter. It can be divided into two parts, an octave and a sestet. The octave has eight lines, and they rhyme abbaabba. In this part of the sonnet, the question is raised, the theme is initialized and we get the insight of the leitmotif of the narrative. The rhythm achieved with the iambic pentameter and the rhyme leaves calm and unvaried impression. The reader is lulled into the storytelling of a dying woman, who is announcing her death.

And then comes the second part, sestet, the theme culminates and we evidence how the point is being made. The reader is awakened, because the monotonous rhythm is changed, which is achieved with the variation in the rhyming scheme. In sestet, the rhyme looks like cddece. Looking only at the rhyme, we can say that the atmosphere in the sestet is different from the one we witnessed in the octave. But, what is the theme of the sonnet?

There can be found two themes in "Remember me when I am gone away“. They are actually the same theme, but they work on different perception levels. The first one is the balmy message of the narrator (the dying woman) to her lover, something like a guide for his behaviour after her death. She is reassuring him that, when it accidentally happens that he forgets her for a moment, it‘s not the end of the world, and that she wants him more to be happy than to be sorrowful. The second theme is on a meta-level, it‘s a message from author (or implied author) to the reader that, although we ache without the person that is gone "into the silent land“, it should not consume our lives, lives of those who are left living. Is only the change in rhyme scheme supporting the content and the meaning of the sonnet? Let us analyse the figurative language used in "Remember“.

First of all, we can notice that the choice of words is simple and that there are no visual details in these 14 lines. Christina Rossetti uses imperatives (remember me) three times in first eight lines. These occurrences of imperatives indicate the situations in which she expects that her lover will remember her. Not only that she expects that from him, but she formulates it in imperative to explicitly exemplify the extraordinary situations in which it would be justifiable, from her point of view, for him to remember her. In the second part of the sonnet, we have no more imperatives, but very temperate and cautious formulations (should remember, should forget). This also indicates the change of the mood. The author states that for her, although she contemplates possible objections, it would be better that her lover sometimes forget that she is gone and smiles, than to "remember and be sad“.

Christina Rossetti uses figurative language sparingly. There are three metaphors in the whole sonnet. The first metaphor is in verse 1, "Remember me when I am gone away“, where the words "gone away“ are used instead of "dead“. Having in mind only first line, we can‘t be sure is she just leaving him, going for a journey or is she dying. We might say that, in this sense, this metaphor, standing for itself, is ambiguous. No sooner than line 2, we realize that this metaphor works in above mentioned way. Actually, the second metaphor, situated in line 2, "Gone far away into the silent land“, gives us "silent land“ as tenor, and "eternal life“ as vehicle. Just keeping this in mind, we can say that metaphor 1 is really having "dead“ as vehicle. Third metaphor is in verse 11 "For if the darkness and corruption leave“, where "darkness and corruption leave“ is used as metaphor for his anger at her death.

This sonnet is obviously carefully planned. Both themes, on both levels, work perfectly together. They complement each other, while they make a complete idea of single destiny and general recommendation.