To Read and Dream
Christina Rossetti
1830–1894
a p enguin since 2001
Christina Rossetti
To Read and Dream
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Complete Poems published in Penguin Classics 2001; Selected Poems published 2008 This selection published in Penguin Classics 2025 001
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‘When I am dead, my dearest’
When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree: Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain; I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on, as if in pain: And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set, Haply I may remember, And haply may forget.
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.
On the Death of a Cat
A Friend of Mine, Aged Ten Years and a Half.
Who shall tell the lady’s grief
When her Cat was past relief?
Who shall number the hot tears
Shed o’er her, beloved for years?
Who shall say the dark dismay
Which her dying caused that day?
Come, ye Muses, one and all, Come obedient to my call.
Come and mourn, with tuneful breath, Each one for a separate death
And while you in numbers sigh, I will sing her elegy.
Of a noble race she came, And Grimalkin was her name.
Young and old full many a mouse
Felt the prowess of her house:
Weak and strong full many a rat
Cowered beneath her crushing pat:
And the birds around the place
Shrank from her too close embrace.
But one night, reft of her strength, She laid down and died at length:
Lay a kitten by her side,
In whose life the mother died. Spare her line and lineage, Guard her kitten’s tender age, And that kitten’s name as wide Shall be known as her’s that died.
Sappho
I sigh at day-dawn, and I sigh When the dull day is passing by. I sigh at evening, and again I sigh when night brings sleep to men. Oh! it were better far to die Than thus for ever mourn and sigh, And in death’s dreamless sleep to be Unconscious that none weep for me; Eased from my weight of heaviness, Forgetful of forgetfulness, Resting from pain and care and sorrow Thro’ the long night that knows no morrow; Living unloved, to die unknown, Unwept, untended and alone.