Writers find words to express their deepest thoughts and imagination. Through coated words, embellished language do they give imagery to these ideas. Christina Rossetti's Remember Me When I am Gone is one of the most popular poems of all time that even the academe discusses its meaning and context.

The initial perception after reading this poem lies on the theme of death. True enough, it is, but scholarly interpretations and studies of this poem claim it to be influenced by love. In analyzing a poem, the reader should consider the context of the period the poem is written. Reader's interpretation of the poem may vary since perceptions and frame of reference are influential to one's interpretation.

However, knowing what's behind the poem gives us a glimpse not only of the writer, her experience, her inspiration and her life. It is fascinating to acknowledge the etymon of a poem that has inspired and touch people for centuries. Christina Rossetti drew her themes on her life as much as most writer's do. In this celebrated poem, love was the central theme covered in the enigma of words which harks memories, much more like a melodious message of the soul.

At the age of 17, she was engaged to James Collinson. He too was a member of the Pre-Raphalite Brotherhood which Christina and her other sibling Dante was associated. However, she broke her engagement to to Collinson when he switched to Roman Catholicism. Her devotion to her religious temperaments caused the her disengagement with Collinson. Her works always reflected her state.

Rossetti's work during the period of engagement to Collinson did not reflect joy or hope but the peak of her love for him has been transformed into overwhelming words and lines which to date is read by everyone. Love was related to death-- Remember . Her idea of love became unrelentingly synonymous to death. As she shrinks into love, she shrinks into death.

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.

In this poem, she requests of her lover to remember her even in her death. A wish that she may live in the memory of the one she loves and yet not obliging him to remember her if he does not want to; if the thought of her should make him unhappy. Most of her works reflected her visit in the ideas of death, afterlife, sadness, and love that gave life and profoundness to her poems.

The poem in its simplest form, very characteristic of Rossetti's work, is but beyond the words or lightness of its rhyme and meters. It speaks of a poet's profound thoughts of love and death, her melancholy; for love is not a mere indication of life and happiness but of woes and death.