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The Poet's Craftby Stewart Ferris

Christina Rossetti

Remember

Petrarchan sonnet. 1862. The rhyme scheme is ABBA ABBA CDDE CE. What follows is a reading of the pauses, the line-breaks, and the sounds that return — not a life of the poet.

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 dayYou tell me of our future that you plann’d:Only remember me; you understandIt will be late to counsel then or pray.Yet if you should forget me for a whileAnd afterwards remember, do not grieve:For if the darkness and corruption leaveA vestige of the thoughts that once I had,Better by far you should forget and smileThan that you should remember and be sad.
Remember — Christina Rossetti. Public domain.

This is a poem about sadness that refuses to spend fourteen lines asking for sadness. The octave begs to be remembered. The sestet takes the plea back. That turn — the volta — is the reason the Petrarchan shape exists. Eight lines build a demand. Six lines are allowed to repent of it.

The rhyme scheme ABBA ABBA is enclosed, and the enclosure is the trap of grief. “Away / stay,” “land / hand”: the A rhymes are departure, the B rhymes are the body still here. Because B is locked inside A, the hand-holding is surrounded by going. You hear the relationship as already inside its ending. A Shakespearean scheme, with its forward-marching quatrains, would have felt like a story. Rossetti wants a clasp.

Line 4 is the octave’s best caesura, and it has no comma where a careless reader would put one. “Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.” The pause is grammatical and rhythmic, between “go” and “yet.” Two verbs of opposite direction share a line. That is a caesura enacted by syntax rather than by punctuation. The body hesitates in the middle of the measure.

“Only remember me; you understand” uses a semicolon as a softening. The command is issued and then immediately translated into the beloved’s knowledge. The caesura hands the line over. It is also the last time the poem is sure of what it wants. After this, “pray” closes the octave, and the praying is already said to be too late.

“Yet” at the start of line 9 is the whole turn in one syllable. Everything before it is imperative. Everything after it is permission. The enjambment “leave / A vestige” is quiet and physical: darkness might leave something, and the something does not arrive until the next line, so the leaving happens in the break. Then the rhyme opens out. CDDE CE does not enclose. “Grieve / leave” is a couplet of warning, and “had / sad” waits until the poem is ready to reject sadness by rhyming with it.

The last two lines are the poem’s moral and its critique of a certain kind of elegy. “Smile / sad” is not a rhyme. They sit in parallel grammar — “forget and smile” against “remember and be sad” — and the parallelism is stronger than chime. Rossetti lines the two fates up like a balance. The technical lesson for anyone writing about grief: the sad ending is the obvious ending. The turn is to prefer the loved person’s ease over the poem’s claim on them.

The joins

  • Volta. If you are writing grief, schedule the moment you stop asking. In a Petrarchan sonnet that moment is line 9, and the first word can do it.
  • Caesura. A hesitation need not be a comma. Two opposite verbs in one line will make the voice pause between them.
  • Rhyme. Enclosed rhyme suits clinging. When the feeling lets go, let the scheme loosen. The last lines may work by parallel grammar instead of a perfect chime.

More readings are kept in the weekly archive. The craft lesson closest to this poem’s method is the related lesson.