REMEMBER
Sunday, 16 March 2014
BASIC STUFF
• What form of poem is this?
• How do you know?
• List 4 key elements of this form
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14 Lines
Octave/sestet division
Change of POV at the VOLTA
About Love
The poem
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 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.
Structure:
14 lines
2 quatrains to the Octave
Then the sestet–follow the punctuation
Quatrain 1
The focus of the poem
is the opening word.
We will explore the
idea of memory.
1st person focus
Repeated but
strengthened
suggesting the
finality of death
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
euphemism
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
2nd character
introduced
Reinforces the
subject under
discussion
Quatrain 2
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.
Consider : why are these words
set in opposition? What is
suggested?
Not asking much – no
need to memorialise
2nd
character
seems to be
controlling –
not nec bad
thing
Highlights a new
direction of
thought
After the VOLTA
1st part of
conditional
sentence
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.
Conditional is completed. The poem has
totally changed direction.
Imperative
: strength
IDEAS?
• LOVE AND LOSS
• Attitudes to love
• Compare with sonnet 116. Here love should
include allowing a partner to forget… a kindness.
Shakespeare will suggest that love lasts until “the
edge of doom”.
• Nature of the relationship – the 2nd character is
controlling. Does the first voice complain or
simply comment?
• Find links with other poems in the anthology…