Readings · Poems
Remember
Christina Rossetti · 14 lines
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
About this reading
Christina Rossetti first published this sonnet in 1862, in Goblin Market and Other Poems, which Macmillan printed in London and Cambridge. It is spoken by someone who is going away, asking to be remembered. At the close it turns, and says that forgetting and smiling would be better than remembering and being sad.
- First published
- 1862
- Text from
- Goblin Market and Other Poems (London and Cambridge, 1862)
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