Love, Desire & Renunciation
Rossetti's love poetry is defined by what cannot be: impossible love, lost love, renounced love, love separated by death. The intensity with which she depicts renounced desire reveals profound ambivalence — poems that enact the very passion they ostensibly reject.
Overview
Unlike traditional love poetry celebrating union and fulfilment, Rossetti's verse maps the territory of longing, loss, and withdrawal. Yet the intensity with which she depicts renounced desire suggests profound ambivalence — these are poems that enact the very passion they ostensibly reject. Speakers who claim to want forgetting remain obsessed with memory; those who renounce earthly love do so with such sensuous language that the poetry itself becomes a form of possession.
Rossetti's love poems reveal the psychological complexity of Victorian femininity — women taught to suppress desire, yet desire remains, finding expression through negation, absence, and the very act of saying "I will not speak of this."
Central Paradox
Speakers who claim to want forgetting remain obsessed with memory; those who renounce earthly love do so with such sensuous language that the poetry itself becomes a form of possession.
Key Patterns
- Death as rival or resolution: Earthly love vs. divine love
- Memory vs. forgetting: Should the beloved be remembered or released?
- Speech vs. silence: Whether to articulate love or maintain restraint
- Presence through absence: Lost beloved more powerful than present one
- Time's tyranny: Love cannot survive temporal change, decay, death
Poems covered: "Remember," "Echo," "Song (When I am dead, my dearest)," "Twice," "Memory," "‘Have you forgotten?’," "Sweet Death," "A Triad"
"Remember" (p. 16)
Petrarchan sonnet · ABBAABBA CDDECE
Text and Form
A Petrarchan sonnet that begins as conventional memorial poem but subverts expectations. The octave instructs the beloved to remember; the sestet reverses, urging him to forget if remembering causes pain. The volta (turn at line 9) is dramatic — from command to permission, from speaker's need to beloved's welfare.
Detailed Analysis
Lines 1–4
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.
The opening imperative establishes the speaker's central anxiety: posthumous oblivion. Yet euphemisms soften death's reality \u2014 'gone away' (like travel), 'silent land' (pastoral, not terrifying). The repetition of 'gone' and 'away' emphasises distance, not horror.
Line 3's physical intimacy — "hold me by the hand" — is Rossetti's most directly sensual expression in the poem. The hand-holding suggests courtship, marriage, companionship. Its loss represents not just death but the end of physical connection.
Line 4's paradox — "half turn to go yet turning stay" — captures the leave-taking moment's ambivalence. The speaker cannot fully commit to departure; she's torn between staying (life, love, presence) and going (death, duty, absence).
Lines 5–8
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.
'Day by day' suggests the dailiness of love \u2014 routine, ordinary, precious. 'Future that you planned' is poignant: it's his future, not ours, because she's already excluded herself through anticipated death.
"Only remember me" intensifies the imperative. The adverb "only" suggests: this is all I ask; this small thing; nothing else matters. Yet "only" also limits — just remember, don't do more.
"It will be late to counsel then or pray" — once she's dead, he cannot seek her advice or her prayers. The relationship's interactivity ends. "Late" suggests both too late (time has passed) and chronologically late (evening of life). Prayer's futility after death is theologically complex.
Lines 9–11 (The Volta)
Yet if you should forget me for a while / And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
The volta: dramatic shift from command ('remember') to permission ('forget'). 'Yet' signals reversal. 'For a while' softens forgetting \u2014 temporary, not permanent abandonment.
"And afterwards remember" suggests memory's inevitable return. Even if he forgets, he'll remember eventually. Forgetting may be self-protective, temporary, healthy; later, he can remember without pain. Or: forgetting is impossible; memory resurfaces despite attempts to suppress it.
Lines 12–14
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.
'Darkness and corruption' name death's physical reality \u2014 the body's decay, opposed to earlier euphemisms. The poem moves from euphemism to brutal honesty.
"A vestige of the thoughts that once I had" — after death, will any consciousness remain? Victorian crisis: do we persist after death as ourselves, or are we transformed beyond recognition?
The final couplet offers an impossible choice: forget and smile, or remember and be sad. She claims to prefer his happiness (forgetting) to his fidelity (remembering). But the poem's very existence contradicts this — she writes to ensure he won't forget. The poem enacts what it claims to reject.
Context (AO3)
Victorian Memorial Poetry
Genre dominated by sentimentality, religious consolation, certainty of heavenly reunion. Rossetti's poem is more psychologically complex — speaker doubts the afterlife, prioritises beloved's happiness over her own memorial.
Gender Dynamics
Female speaker makes no demands on male beloved — she gives him permission to forget, move on, presumably remarry. This aligns with Victorian ideal of female self-sacrifice. Yet the poem's artistry ensures he won't forget — the poem itself is memorial, more lasting than memory.
Biographical Context
Written 1849 (age 19), before her two refused marriage proposals. Not about a specific relationship but anticipates the renunciation theme that dominates her work. Rossetti chose spinsterhood (religious and possibly health reasons), yet writes powerfully about romantic love's loss.
Form & Language (AO2)
Sonnet Tradition
Petrarchan form traditionally encodes courtly love — male poet worships unattainable female beloved. Rossetti inverts: female speaker addresses male beloved, but she's unattainable through death, not disdain. The volta complicates rather than resolves.
Repetition
"Remember" appears 6 times; "forget" 3 times. "Gone" appears 3 times in the first 4 lines. Repetition creates an incantatory, obsessive effect — the speaker cannot let go.
Euphemism vs. Honesty
"Silent land" vs. "darkness and corruption" — the poem moves from comforting metaphor to physical reality. This structural movement mirrors the psychological journey from denial to acceptance.
Conditional Language & Negation
"If," "should," "would" — uncertainty pervades. "No more," "nor," "do not" — a poetry of what's lost, absent, forbidden. Negation defines the poem's emotional landscape.
Critical Perspectives (AO5)
Feminist Readings
Dolores Rosenblum argues the poem reveals "the paradox of women’s power through powerlessness." The speaker claims no power (she's dead, cannot demand remembrance), yet the poem ensures her permanence.
Sharon Smulders reads it as critique of female self-abnegation — the speaker's selflessness is also self-erasure, and the poem questions this.
Religious Readings
Some critics see Christian resignation — speaker accepts death, trusts God's plan, prioritises charity (beloved's happiness) over self-interest. Others note the poem's theological uncertainty — doubt about afterlife, consciousness, reunion.
Psychoanalytic Readings
Represents ambivalence about being forgotten and desire to be remembered. The contradiction between "remember" and "forget" suggests psychological splitting — conscious self wants beloved's happiness; unconscious self demands eternal fidelity.
Connections (AO4)
Key Quotations
- Remember me when I am gone away — Opening imperative; anxiety about being forgotten; euphemism for death
- When you can no more hold me by the hand — Physical intimacy lost; touch as connection
- Only remember me; you understand — Intensified plea; assumed intimacy; 'only' limits and emphasises
- Yet if you should forget me for a while — Volta; reversal; permission to forget
- Darkness and corruption — Death's physical reality; brutal honesty replaces euphemism
- Better by far you should forget and smile / Than that you should remember and be sad — Apparent selflessness; impossible choice; contradiction with poem's existence
"Echo" (p. 30)
Two octaves · ABABCDCD
Text and Form
The title names the poem's central conceit — the beloved's voice echoes in the speaker's mind, inescapable, tormenting. Echo (Greek myth: nymph cursed to repeat others' words) suggests the speaker's lack of autonomous voice, her identity consumed by the beloved.
Detailed Analysis
Lines 1–4
Come to me in the silence of the night; / Come in the speaking silence of a dream; / Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright / As sunlight on a stream;
Anaphora ('Come...Come...Come') creates an incantatory, spell-like quality \u2014 the speaker summons the absent beloved as if through magic. The imperative mood shows desire's urgency.
"Speaking silence" is oxymoron — silence that communicates, pregnant with meaning. Dreams speak what waking consciousness suppresses. The physical description — "soft rounded cheeks," "eyes as bright / As sunlight on a stream" — is sensuous, tender. This is Rossetti's rare moment of unguarded sensual appreciation.
Lines 5–8
Come back in tears, / O memory, hope, love of finished years. / O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet, / Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
'Memory, hope, love of finished years' \u2014 three nouns mapping a temporal relationship. Memory = past; hope = future; love = ongoing present feeling despite absence. 'Finished years' yet love persists.
"Too sweet, too bitter sweet" — repetition and paradox. "Sweet" repeated thrice shows the dream's pleasure. But "too sweet" suggests excess, danger — sweetness that harms. "Bitter sweet" is oxymoron: pleasure is also pain because it's illusory. "Whose wakening should have been in Paradise" suggests the dream anticipates heavenly reunion. But waking in earthly life is harsh return to separation.
Lines 9–12
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give / Pulse for pulse, breath for breath: / Speak low, lean low,
The speaker desires reciprocal physical intimacy. Pulse and breath are bodily rhythms, signs of life. This is Rossetti's most physically intimate love language \u2014 not genital but cardiovascular, respiratory, embodied.
"Speak low, lean low" — imperatives invite physical and vocal closeness. "Low" (quiet, intimate, close to ear) suggests secrecy, privacy, whispered confidences.
Lines 13–16
As long ago, my love, how long ago.
Repetition emphasises temporal distance. 'Long ago' creates fairy tale quality. The caesura after 'my love' isolates the vocative, making it tender, painful.
The final four lines repeat lines 1–4 exactly — circular structure suggests obsession, inability to move beyond this moment. The speaker is trapped in repetitive loop, like Echo condemned to repeat. Memory doesn't progress; it circles.
Context (AO3)
Echo Myth (Ovid)
Nymph Echo falls in love with Narcissus, who rejects her. Cursed by Hera, she can only repeat others' last words. She fades until only voice remains. Rossetti invokes this — the speaker's identity is consumed by the beloved.
Victorian Mourning Culture
Elaborate rituals governed grief — women wore black, mourning jewellery made from the deceased's hair, widows waited years before remarrying. Dreams of the dead were common topic in spiritualist culture (1850s–70s). Rossetti participates in this but also critiques endless mourning as self-destructive.
Form & Language (AO2)
Repetition & Circularity
Opening and closing stanzas mirror each other. Within stanzas, anaphora ("Come...Come...Come"), repetition ("sweet...sweet...bitter sweet"). Repetition enacts obsession, memory's inescapability, Echo's curse.
Oxymoron
"Speaking silence," "bitter sweet" — paradoxes capture love's contradictions. The beloved is absent but present, memory is pleasure and pain, silence communicates.
Sensory Language
Visual ("bright," "sunlight"), tactile ("soft," "rounded"), auditory ("speak low"), physiological ("pulse," "breath"). The poem is intensely embodied despite the beloved's absence.
Circular Structure
Ending where it began suggests no resolution, no progress, no escape. The speaker is trapped in eternal return.
Critical Perspectives (AO5)
Psychoanalytic
Freudian melancholia — speaker cannot complete mourning, cannot detach from lost object (beloved). The melancholic incorporates the lost object into the ego, making loss part of identity. The speaker's identity becomes the loss itself.
Feminist
Poem dramatises women's limited options in Victorian culture — without husband, woman's identity is absence, echo. Yet the poem's artistry transcends this — Rossetti gives voice to voicelessness, makes absence present through language.
Connections (AO4)
Key Quotations
- Come to me in the silence of the night — Incantatory opening; night as time of vulnerability, dreams
- Speaking silence — Oxymoron; silence pregnant with meaning; dreams communicate
- Memory, hope, love of finished years — Temporal triad; past, future, present; 'finished' yet ongoing
- Too sweet, too bitter sweet — Paradox; pleasure is pain; excess; oxymoron captures love's contradiction
- Pulse for pulse, breath for breath — Physical intimacy; bodily rhythms; erotic unity
- As long ago, my love, how long ago — Temporal distance; fairy tale past; tender vocative; repetition
"Song (When I am dead, my dearest)" (p. 14)
Two octaves · ABABCDCD · Ballad rhythm
Text and Form
The title "Song" suggests musicality, simplicity (many Rossetti poems were set to music). But the poem's apparent simplicity conceals complexity and ambivalence. Simple ballad-like rhythm and monosyllabic diction mask profoundly unsettling ideas about death, consciousness, and love's durability.
Detailed Analysis
Lines 1–4
When I am dead, my dearest, / Sing no sad songs for me; / Plant thou no roses at my head, / Nor shady cypress tree:
Opening conditional 'When I am dead' (not 'if') accepts death's inevitability. 'My dearest' is tender yet possessive \u2014 he's hers even in death. The speaker refuses conventional mourning rituals.
Roses symbolise love, beauty, remembrance. Cypress trees are traditional graveyard planting, symbols of mourning and eternal life (evergreen). The speaker rejects both. "Thou" is archaic/poetic second-person, creating formal, distanced tone — formality suggests emotional control or detachment.
Lines 5–8
Be the green grass above me / With showers and dewdrops wet; / And if thou wilt, remember, / And if thou wilt, forget.
Only natural covering desired \u2014 grass is ordinary, common, not a human-created symbol. Speaker wants to return to nature, be forgotten as individual. Rain and dew enact cycles of life. Nature doesn't mourn, it simply continues.
"And if thou wilt, remember, / And if thou wilt, forget" — speaker gives beloved complete freedom. Parallelism places "remember" and "forget" as equal options, neither preferred. This is radically generous or radically detached. But does she mean this? The poem's existence argues against complete indifference.
Lines 9–12
I shall not see the shadows, / I shall not feel the rain; / I shall not hear the nightingale / Sing on, as if in pain:
Anaphora ('I shall not') emphasises negation \u2014 death as absence of sensation. Three senses invoked: sight ('shadows'), touch ('rain'), hearing ('nightingale').
The nightingale is traditional symbol of poet/poetry (Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale"), love, melancholy. Its song sounds mournful ("as if in pain"). The simile "as if" questions whether the nightingale's song truly expresses pain or humans project emotion onto it — does nature feel, or do we anthropomorphise?
Lines 13–16
And dreaming through the twilight / That doth not rise nor set, / Haply I may remember, / And haply may forget.
Afterlife as perpetual twilight, neither day (consciousness) nor night (oblivion). 'Dreaming' suggests half-consciousness. Death isn't full awareness or nothingness, but a liminal, dreamlike state.
"Haply I may remember, / And haply may forget" — "haply" means "perhaps, maybe." The speaker doesn't know what happens after death, whether she'll retain memory, identity, love. This undercuts Christian certainty about the afterlife.
The parallelism mirrors stanza 1's ending, creating structural symmetry between the speaker's instructions to the beloved and her own uncertain fate. Neither remembering nor forgetting is preferred — both are simply possible.
Context (AO3)
Victorian Doubt
Mid-19th century saw crisis of faith. Scientific materialism, biblical criticism, Darwin's evolution challenged traditional Christian certainty. What happens after death became a genuine question, not assumed knowledge. Rossetti's poem reflects this uncertainty.
Sentimental Death Poetry
Conventionally, poets asserted continued love after death, heavenly reunion, the dead watching over the living. Rossetti's speaker claims she might not remember, might not care, might not exist as conscious self. Radically honest or theologically troubling.
Form & Language (AO2)
Deceptive Simplicity
Monosyllabic diction, simple syntax, ballad rhythm. Creates song-like accessibility. But simplicity is deceptive — the ideas are complex, ambivalent, theologically unsettling.
Negation
"No sad songs," "no roses," "nor cypress," "I shall not see/feel/hear," "doth not rise nor set." The poem defines afterlife through absence — what won't happen.
Parallelism
Stanzas mirror each other structurally. Lines 7–8 parallel 15–16 (remember/forget). Creates balance, symmetry, formal control.
Natural Imagery
Grass, rain, dewdrops, shadows, nightingale, twilight — all natural, not human-created. Speaker aligns with nature, not human culture (mourning rituals, religion, poetry).
Critical Perspectives (AO5)
Religious Controversy
Victorian reviewers were troubled by the poem's uncertainty about the afterlife and apparent indifference to the beloved after death. More recent critics praise the honesty — Rossetti won't assert what she doesn't know.
Feminist Reading
Speaker refuses conventional femininity (self-sacrificing mourner, eternal faithful lover) by claiming potential indifference. She prioritises truth over comfort, autonomy (even in death) over relationality.
Keats Comparison
Nightingale reference invokes Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" where speaker longs to "cease upon the midnight with no pain." Rossetti similarly imagines death as peaceful non-existence, but without Keats' anguish.
Connections (AO4)
Key Quotations
- When I am dead, my dearest — Conditional opening; tender vocative; accepts death
- Sing no sad songs for me — Rejects conventional mourning
- And if thou wilt, remember, / And if thou wilt, forget — Gives freedom; parallelism; apparent indifference
- I shall not see the shadows, / I shall not feel the rain — Anaphora; negation; death as sensory absence
- Dreaming through the twilight / That doth not rise nor set — Afterlife as perpetual liminal state; neither day nor night
- Haply I may remember, / And haply may forget — Uncertainty; mirrors earlier line; theological doubt
Key Patterns Across Theme
The Remember/Forget Paradox
All three poems negotiate between memory and forgetting. "Remember" moves from insisting on memory to permitting forgetting. "Echo" shows forgetting is impossible. "Song" claims genuine indifference. Together they map Rossetti's complex, contradictory relationship with memory — it's both precious and painful, desired and feared.
Female Agency Through Renunciation
In each poem the female speaker renounces: in "Remember," she renounces her own memorial; in "Echo," she renounces waking reality for dreams; in "Song," she renounces all mourning conventions. Paradoxically, renunciation becomes a form of control — by giving up claims, the speaker asserts autonomy.
Death as Threshold
Death is never simply ending but a boundary state. The "silent land," the dream-space, the "twilight that doth not rise nor set" — all are liminal, in-between spaces. Rossetti's speakers don't die into oblivion or heaven, but into ambiguity.
The Poem as Contradiction
Each poem's existence contradicts its content. "Remember" says "forget" but ensures remembrance. "Echo" enacts the very obsession it describes. "Song" claims indifference but is too artful to be truly uncaring. The poems perform what they deny.
More poems in this theme: "Twice," "Memory," "‘Have you forgotten?’," "Sweet Death," and "A Triad" — additional detailed analysis to follow.