# Remember

Updated October 9, 2026
The complete text of Remember, with the story of its author, what it means, and notes to help you read it well.

## The poem

**Christina Rossetti** (1830–1894)
*Written in 1849; published in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862).*

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 the author

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) was an English poet associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, the circle led by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti. She wrote 'Remember' at nineteen. Her best-known works, 'Goblin Market' and the Christmas carol 'In the Bleak Midwinter' (originally her poem), combine devotional feeling with precise, musical language. She never married and lived a quiet, deeply religious life in London.

## Themes

Love that releases rather than clings. The sonnet begins as a plea, 'Remember me', and ends by giving the beloved permission to forget: better to forget and smile than to remember and be sad. It is a love poem that argues against its own first line, and wins the argument.

## Reading note

Watch the turn at line 9, 'Yet if you should forget me': the whole sonnet pivots there. The first eight lines ask for remembrance; the last six take the request back. That reversal, from longing to generosity, is what lifts the poem above a simple elegy.

## Frequently asked questions

### Who is the poem addressed to?

No one in particular. Written when Rossetti was nineteen, it is a imagined farewell rather than a message to a real lover. Its power comes from its universality: anyone facing parting can speak these lines.

### What is 'the silent land'?

Death, imagined as a distant country. Rossetti, a devout Anglican, pictures the afterlife as a far place from which the dead cannot return, which is why holding hands and daily conversation must end.

### Why does she say it is better to be forgotten?

Because her love wants the beloved's happiness more than her own remembrance. If remembering brings only grief, she would rather be forgotten with a smile. It is the poem's final, selfless turn.

### Is 'Remember' a sonnet?

Yes, a Petrarchan sonnet: fourteen lines, with an octave (eight lines) presenting the plea and a sestet (six lines) reversing it. The form's built-in turn, the volta, carries the poem's emotional reversal.