Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

Remember

(1849, 1862)

Christina Rossetti

(December 5, 1830–December 29, 1894)

"Remember" Notes

This poem is dated July 25, 1849. It was first published in 1862 in Rossetti's first collection of poems Goblin Market and Other Poems.

7–8  Only...pray:

• Simon Humphries, "Remember," Notes, Poems and Prose, by Christina Rossetti, edited by Simon Humphries, Oxford UP, 2008, p. 409.
  The insistent tone of you understand is possibly to be understood in the context of controversy over the revival, by Tractarian clerics, of praying for the dead—a practice that, to their opponents, could imply a revival of the 'Romish' doctrine of purgatory (explicitly rejected in Article XXII, BCP). Here, the dead can be remembered only.

11–12  For...had:

• Simon Humphries, "Remember," Notes, Poems and Prose, by Christina Rossetti, edited by Simon Humphries, Oxford UP, 2008, p. 409.
  Probably referring to uncertainty over the continuing consciousness of the soul in the intermediate state between death and resurrection. The sense is: 'if, following the decomposition (corruption) of my body, my soul is left one thought that I had when living, that thought will be "Better by far..." (ll. 13–14)'. It is less likely, but not impossible, that the vestige of those thoughts is to be left not to the speaker, but to the 'you' of the sonnet: 'if one thought can survive my death, the thought I would leave you—by means of this utterance/poem—would be "Better by far..."'. But where Shakespeare's sonnet makes ironic use of the topos of the speaker being remembered through his verse ('if you read this line, remember not | The hand that writ it', ll. 6–7), the speaker of this sonnet is not explicitly a poet (her hand is what she is held by, not what she writes with, l. 3), and the 'you' is not explicitly a reader.

12  vestige:

• vestige (Oxford Dictionary)
  1 A trace or remnant of something that is disappearing or no longer exists.
  ‘the last vestiges of colonialism’
  
  1.1 (usually with negative) The smallest amount.
  ‘he waited patiently, but without a vestige of sympathy’

• vestige (Online Etymology Dictionary)
  c. 1600, from French vestige "a mark, trace, sign" (16c.), from Latin vestigium "footprint, trace," a word of unknown origin.

Letters

To William Michael Rossetti, 19 September 1853

[...] This morning I commenced a remarkable doggerel on the P.R.B. &c.; but perhaps if I give you a sample of it you may not pant for its completion.

You may guess that at this point of my letter I came to a stand, from the extra finish bestowed on the three last asterisks. [...]

—Christina Rossetti, Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 19 Sep. 1853, Poems and Prose,

edited by Simon Humphries, Oxford UP, 2008, p. 385.

To Adolph Heinmann, [? April 1862]

On the subject of my little book I have not received kinder or dearer letters than the two which you and your wife have sent me. But some of my verses have grieved you: I recall titles and subjects, and suspect At Home, and Shut Out, of being amongst these offenders. If sad and melancholy, I suggest that few people reach the age of 31 without sad and melancholy experiences: if despondent, I take shame and blame to myself, as they show that I have been unmindful of the daily love and mercy lavished upon me. But remember, please, that these and the rest have been written during a period of some 14 years, and under many varying influences of circumstances, health and spirits; that they are moreover not mainly the fruit of effort, but the record of sensation, fancy, what not, much as these came and went. My next volume--should a next volume ever come to pass--may, I hope, show an improved tone of mind and feeling: but for the present, you must even accept the actual volume with all its shortcomings. [...]

—Christina Rossetti, Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 19 Sep. 1853, Poems and Prose,
edited by Simon Humphries, Oxford UP, 2008, p. 386.

To Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 7 May 1864

Don't think me a perfect weathercock. But why rush before the public with an immature vol.? I really think of not communicating at all with Mac at present: but waiting the requisite number of months (or years, as the case may be) until I have a sufficiency of quality as well as quantity. Is not this after all my best plan? If meanwhile my things become remains, that need be no bugbear to scare me into premature publicity. Not that the brotherly trouble you have already taken need be lost, as your work will of course avail when (and if) the day of publication comes. [...]

—Christina Rossetti, Letter to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 7 May 1864, Poems and Prose,
edited by Simon Humphries, Oxford UP, 2008, p. 387.

Sonnet 71

 —William Shakespeare, Sonnet 71, The Complete Poems,

edited by R. W. Crump and Betty S. flowers, Penguin, 2001, p. 240.

But whether these interesting dis/similarities mean that CGR's sonnet is 'modelled' on Shakespeare's (as John Kerrigan (ed.), The Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint (1986), 44) is questionable. On 3 December 1864, CGR responded to W. H. Budden's observation that one of her sonnets--one which 'cannot have been written less than 15 years ago'—showed a 'singular coincidence' with lines of Shakespeare's (L 1.204). Neither her sonnet, nor what was presumably a sonnet of Shakespeare's, is identified in the letter; but, among the small number of her sonnets written not less than fifteen years before—and in print by—1864, this would seem that most likely to have drawn Budden's observation. But CGR commented that she had no recollection of ever reading the lines of Shakespeare that Budden had in mind, and was perhaps even less likely to have read them when she composed her sonnet.

—Simon Humphries, "Remember," Notes, Poems and Prose, by Christina Rossetti,
edited by Simon Humphries, Oxford UP, 2008, p. 409.

Vocabulary

• visual imagery
• auditory imagery
• olfactory imagery
• gustatory imagery
• tactile imagery
• kinesthetic imagery
• organic imagery
• synesthetic imagery

caesura
rhyme scheme
rhyme

• end rhyme
• perfect rhyme, true rhyme
• internal rhyme
• near/slant rhyme

rhythm
alliteration

consonance

Response 1:

 Reference

Reference

Rossetti, Christina. The Complete Poems. Edited by R. W. Crump and Betty S. Flowers, Penguin, 2001.

Further Reading

Rossetti, Christina. Goblin Market and Other Poems. 1862. 2nd ed, Macmillan, 1865.

Rossetti, Christina. The Prince's Progress and Other Poems, 1866.

Rossetti, Christina. Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book. 1872. Illustrated by Arthur Hughes, Macmillan, 1907.

Rossetti, Christina. A Pageant and Other Poems. 1881.

Rossetti, Christina. Verses. 1893.

Hassett, Constance W. Christina Rossetti: The Patience of Style. U of Virginia P, 2005.

Connor, Steven. "'Speaking Likenesses': Language and Repetition in Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market." Victorian Poetry, vol. 22, no. 4, 1984, pp. 439–48.

Home  |  Introduction to the Study of English Literature  |  Literary Terms  |  English Resources  

Last updated August 31, 2020