Song - Christina Rossetti Flashcards
(7 cards)
What type of poet is she? What type of poem is it? What is the metre?
Victorian poet
Lyric poet
Even lines is iambic trimeter
Odd lines is iambic tetrameter (some deviations)
‘When I am dead, my dearest,’
immediate tension between title and ‘when i am dead’
‘when i am dead’ - adverbial phrase of time, she’s accepted the fact of death’s inevitability
‘my’ possessive determiner, clutching onto what ties her to life and living
‘my dearest’ - vocatives, terms of endearments
‘Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:’
sibilance, adds rhytmn, very lyrical, romanticises her impending death, suggests an acceptance of her death
Whilst roses represent love, the cypress tree traditionally symbolises mourning because cypress branches were carried at funerals.
By declaring that she has no need of these things, the speaker reassures the lover that she will not be jealous or resentful if the lover continues living his life rather than to mourn for the speaker.
‘Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet:’
‘green grass’ - velor plosives imploring that the lover lives life even after she has passed on, appreciate the nature and its beauty
prepositional phrase ‘above me’ reinforces
‘And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.’
archaic informal language ‘thou’
anaphora ‘and’ suggests she will hold no resentment over whether she will be remembered of forgotten
‘I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale’
anaphora of modal phrase ‘I shall’ creates a rhythmic and emphatic effect, emphasizing the speaker’s certainty about their future absence or inability. ‘see’ ‘feel’ ‘hear’ use of the 5 senses, emphasising her death, the lack of her life post death, almost emotionless, almost like she’s refusing to experience grief of any form.
noun ‘nightingale’ - connotations of darkness and death, symbolic of mortality or pain, she can’t hear it suggesting that her pain will leave her
‘And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget’
noun ‘twilight’ between night and day, symbolises heaven and hell or life and death (she believed there was an ‘‘interval’ in the grave before ‘resurrection’ in the afterlife, believed you entered a soul sleep ‘not rise nor set’ and awake on judgement day. archaic verb ‘doth’ adverb ‘haply’ - foregrounding, nonchalent view of it all, neither remembering of forgetting will impact her greatly.
