Personal Choice Volume 2 No.38

Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830 - 1894) was an English writer of romantic, devotional and children's poems, including ‘Goblin Market’ and ‘Remember’. She also wrote the words of two Christmas carols well known in Britain: ‘In the Bleak Midwinter,’ later set by Gustav Holst, Katherine Kennicott Davis, and Harold Darke, and ‘Love Came Down at Christmas,’ also set by Darke and other composers. She was a sister of the artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and features in several of his paintings.

Remember

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 plann’d:

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.

Christina Rossetti