Remember

 by Christina Georgina Rossetti

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. 

Echo

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;

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,

Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;

Where thirsting longing eyes

Watch the slow door

That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live

My very life again though cold in death:

Come back to me in dreams, that I may give

Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:

Speak low, lean low

As long ago, my love, how long ago. 

Venus's Looking-Glass 

I marked where lovely Venus and her court 

With song and dance and merry laugh went by; 

Weightless, their wingless feet seemed made to fly, 

Bound from the ground and in mid air to sport. 

Left far behind I heard the dolphins snort, 

Tracking their goddess with a wistful eye, 

Around whose head white doves rose, wheeling high 

Or low, and cooed after their tender sort. 

All this I saw in Spring. Through Summer heat 

I saw the lovely Queen of Love no more. 

But when flushed Autumn through the woodlands went 

I spied sweet Venus walk amid the wheat: 

Whom seeing, every harvester gave o'er 

His toil, and laughed and hoped and was content.