The Full Text of “Remembrance (Cold in the earth)”
1Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
2Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
3Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
4Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?
5Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
6Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
7Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
8Thy noble heart forever, ever more?
9Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers,
10From those brown hills, have melted into spring:
11Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
12After such years of change and suffering!
13Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
14While the world's tide is bearing me along;
15Other desires and other hopes beset me,
16Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!
17No later light has lightened up my heaven,
18No second morn has ever shone for me;
19All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given,
20All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee.
21But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,
22And even Despair was powerless to destroy,
23Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
24Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.
25Then did I check the tears of useless passion—
26Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;
27Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
28Down to that tomb already more than mine.
29And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,
30Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain;
31Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
32How could I seek the empty world again?
The Full Text of “Remembrance (Cold in the earth)”
1Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
2Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
3Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
4Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?
5Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
6Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
7Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
8Thy noble heart forever, ever more?
9Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers,
10From those brown hills, have melted into spring:
11Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
12After such years of change and suffering!
13Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
14While the world's tide is bearing me along;
15Other desires and other hopes beset me,
16Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!
17No later light has lightened up my heaven,
18No second morn has ever shone for me;
19All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given,
20All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee.
21But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,
22And even Despair was powerless to destroy,
23Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
24Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.
25Then did I check the tears of useless passion—
26Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;
27Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
28Down to that tomb already more than mine.
29And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,
30Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain;
31Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
32How could I seek the empty world again?
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“Remembrance (Cold in the earth)” Introduction
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“Remembrance (Cold in the earth)” is a poem written in 1845 by the English poet and novelist Emily Brontë. An elegy, “Remembrance” explores death, grief, and loss, as the speaker mourns her first and only love, who died 15 years earlier. Brontë originally wrote the poem in the voice of a character from an imaginary world, Gondal, that she had invented with her siblings when they were children. This character was a queen named Rosina Alcona, who in the poem laments the loss of her beloved husband. When she published the poem, however, Brontë removed any references to this world. “Remembrance” was included in a collection Brontë published with her sisters, the writers Charlotte and Anne Brontë, in 1846.
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“Remembrance (Cold in the earth)” Summary
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Your body is cold in the earth, buried under a thick layer of snow. You're so far away, cold in your bleak and hopeless grave. Have I forgotten about you, even though you're my one and only love? Has the passage of time, with all of its power to separate people from one another, finally and completely cut me off from you?
When I'm alone these days, do I not think about you? Do my thoughts stop drifting off to the place where you're buried on the other side of mountains, near the ocean to the north? Do my thoughts, having flown toward you, no longer pause and rest their wings at your grave, where grasses and ferns cover your virtuous and honorable heart forever and ever?
Your body has remained cold in the earth for fifteen untamed winters—even as the brown, lifeless hills of winter have transformed into spring with the melting of the snow. Yes, of course I've remained faithful to you, as is clear by the fact that I haven't forgotten about you even after so many years of transformation and pain!
My kind, gentle love, whom I loved when I was young: please forgive me if I do actually forget about you as the passage of time carries me along with it, just as the tide carries the water. I might be overcome by other things that I want, yet even though I might be distracted by these things, they will never replace or dishonor you!
Since you died, there has been no other light in my life, and no other morning has ever dawned for me. All the happiness and joy in my life came from you, and thus is now buried with you.
After my days of happiness and shining hopes died with you, and after going through such terrible grief, I learned how to treasure life and to feel strong and fulfilled without comfort or happiness.
Then I stopped crying, realizing that my grief wasn't doing me any good. My soul was like a baby who must be weaned off of breast milk, and I had to gently wean it away from the longing to follow you into death. I had to firmly deny my wish to die and join you in your grave, which already felt like my own grave.
Yet, the truth is that this wish isn’t entirely gone. Even now, I have to be disciplined and not let myself linger in grief nor indulge in my memories of you—memories that are both intensely joyful, since they bring me back to you, and intensely painful, because they remind me that you're gone. Were I to indulge myself and take a deep drink of these memories, to allow myself to experience that wonderful, immense pain that comes with thinking about you, how could I ever return to this world, which is totally empty and meaningless without you in it?
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“Remembrance (Cold in the earth)” Themes
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Death, Grief, and Loss
In “Remembrance,” the speaker addresses a loved one who died 15 years earlier. Reflecting on this loss, the speaker acknowledges the harsh reality of death, and describes an experience of grief that is life-altering and permanent. The poem suggests that death and loss are absolute and universal experiences, and that true grief defies complete resolution or closure. Instead, the poem implies, grief must be borne continuously; it is simply part of life.
At the beginning of the poem, the repetition of “Cold in the earth” and the description of the “deep snow” on the grave of the speaker’s beloved emphasize that the person who has died is irretrievable, beyond the speaker’s reach. Rather than seeking some kind of religious comfort (in which, for example, the speaker might imagine the loved one in heaven), the poem emphasizes the harsh physical reality of death.
The poem also suggests that this reality is universal. By repeating the word “severed” (first used for the speaker’s experience of separation from the loved one) in the phrase “Time’s all-severing wave,” the poem reminds the reader that everyone will experience some form of separation brought about by death.
The poem then shows the speaker grappling with how to cope with this kind of irretrievable loss. The speaker recalls the intensely painful experience of grief that immediately followed the death of her beloved. During this time, the speaker describes experiencing a “burning wish” to relieve this pain by “hasten[ing] / Down to that tomb” and joining her beloved in death.
However, the poem goes on to recount how the speaker “sternly denied” this wish, “check[ed] the tears of useless passion,” and “weaned my young soul from yearning after thine.” By describing this past wish to alleviate grief through dying as “useless” and comparing the speaker’s younger self to a child who had to be “weaned” (as a baby is weaned from breast milk), the poem implicitly suggests that this way of dealing with grief is indulgent or immature.
Instead, the poem depicts the speaker as coming to a way of living in which “existence could be cherished, / Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.” In other words, the speaker describes a process of not succumbing to grief, but rather learning to live with it every day, without the comfort of joy or happiness. Within this state, the poem suggests that “Despair was powerless to destroy” the speaker—implicitly because the speaker has already gone through despair and come to the other side of it.
Yet the poem’s ending shows that this act of living with grief is ongoing, suggesting that true grief defies complete resolution or closure. In the last stanza, the speaker reveals that the intense pain of grief is not an experience of the past. “Even yet,” the speaker says, “I dare not let it languish, / Dare not indulge in memory’s rapturous pain.” The speaker further suggests that in the face of such intense grief, the world is “empty.” Here, the poem shows the speaker’s experience of grief as one that must be coped with every day; it doesn’t recede or come to full resolution.
The poem as a whole also supports this reading. Composed many years after the death of the loved one, the speaker’s pain feels immediate and palpable throughout. Implicitly, then, the poem in its entirety suggests that the speaker’s grief, and any true grief, defies closure and instead becomes an inextricable part of life that the one who grieves must continuously bear.
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The Lasting Power of Love
In the poem, the speaker grapples with what it means to love in the face of death. “Remembrance” doesn’t offer an easy or conventional vision of eternal love; in fact, it questions whether the speaker has, with time, forgotten the one who died. Ultimately, however, the poem shows that the speaker’s love is true and lasting. It suggests that while love can’t change the reality of death, it is equal to it in power because it can last even after a loved one has died. In a sense, the poem suggests that love is a kind of reply to death, offering lasting connection that can overcome death’s power to separate people from each other.
First, the poem acknowledges the power of death and time, and questions the speaker’s love and faithfulness. In the opening stanza, the speaker describes the beloved as “far, far removed.” The poem also asks if the speaker has forgotten to love the one who has died, and if the speaker is“severed,” or cut off, from the beloved by the passage of time. This question shows the speaker assessing their own faithfulness, while also implying that a kind of separation in the face of death is inevitable.
The poem goes on to acknowledge that with the passage of time, the speaker’s attention might be called to other things, and that the loved one might be “obscure[ed]” by “other desires and other hopes.” These acknowledgments pose the possibility that death and the passage of time might have the power to eventually erode love.
Yet the poem goes on to show that the speaker’s love is lasting and real. Even when imagining “other desires and other hopes” that will take the speaker’s attention, the speaker says that these “hopes” can “obscure” the beloved but “cannot do thee wrong.” In other words, the speaker might pay attention to other things in the world, but these can’t displace the importance of the beloved.
Additionally, while questioning whether the speaker’s “thoughts no longer hover” at the grave of the beloved, the poem implicitly shows that the speaker’s thoughts are there, as it describes the place, with the “heath and fern-leaves,” in such detail. The poem also goes on to assert that the speaker’s spirit is “faithful” despite “years of change and suffering.”
The poem’s use of repetition also emphasizes the lasting quality of the speaker’s love. For example, in the opening question, “Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,” the repetition of “Love” shows that the question is paradoxical; how could the speaker have forgotten to “love” their “only Love”? This repetition is heightened in the fifth stanza, with “No later light … No second morn” and “All my life’s bliss … All my life’s bliss.” Directly following the speaker’s acknowledgment of “other desires and other hopes,” this repetition shows clearly that the beloved can’t be replaced and what is most important in the speaker’s life resides with the loved one, even after death.
Finally, the poem’s closing question suggests that, while love can’t alter death, it is a kind of answer to it. In this closing question, the poem acknowledges that the speaker feels a continual pull to remember the beloved and experience the acuteness of loss in “memory’s rapturous pain.” It also shows that in the face of these memories and this loss, the world is now “empty” to the speaker. In other words, the speaker’s true heart and soul are with the beloved.
This closing question implicitly recalls and replies to the poem’s opening, which asked whether the speaker’s love had been “severed.” By showing the speaker’s love as true and lasting, the closing question offers a kind of response to the “severing” power of death. Love, the poem implies, can’t change death; but it is, in a sense, equal to it, since the speaker’s love hasn’t been severed at all.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Remembrance (Cold in the earth)”
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Lines 1-2
Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!The speaker opens the poem by directly addressing someone who has died and is now buried deep in the ground, under a heavy pile of snow. This other person obviously cannot respond, making this an example of apostrophe. (Note that this guide is treating the speaker as female and her deceased beloved as male, in keeping with the original context of the poem as being told from the perspective of a fictional queen mourning the death of her husband. Keep in mind throughout that it's possible to read the poem differently; more on that in the Speaker section.)
"Cold" is an important word here. It is a term often associated with death (whereas life connotes vitality and warmth). The beloved's body is literally cold in that it no longer has warm blood flowing through its veins and is surrounded by the cold winter ground. Indeed, this person's grave is buried under a deep layer of snow, the sheer weight of which is evoked by the phrase "piled above." "Cold" can also have a more figurative connotation of loneliness, of being without love, which is also being evoked here.
The repetition of “cold”—which both opens the poem and begins the last clause of this sentence—thus emphasizes the harsh reality of death, an emphasis heightened by the speaker’s imagining of this person's "dreary"—or dull, depressing—"grave."
The epizeuxis of “Far, far removed,” meanwhile, underscores just how far away the person who has died feels to the speaker. All in all, these first two lines thus hammer home the intense separation the speaker might reasonably feel from the beloved, who seems utterly beyond her reach. The assonance of long /ee/ sounds in “deep,” “thee,” and “dreary” further connects this beloved (that "thee") to the "deep" and "dreary" reality of death.
At the same time, these lines establish the emotional crisis the speaker is undergoing. While acknowledging the physical reality of death, and how far away her dead lover feels, the speaker addresses her beloved directly as “thee.” This direct address gives the lines a sense of intimacy, as though the person who has died is still right there with the speaker. Within the context of the rest of these lines, which emphasize that the person who died is “cold” and “removed,” the direct address builds a crucial tension into the poem at the outset.
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Lines 3-4
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave? -
Lines 5-8
Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
Thy noble heart forever, ever more? -
Lines 9-12
Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers,
From those brown hills, have melted into spring:
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering! -
Lines 13-16
Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world's tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong! -
Lines 17-20
No later light has lightened up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee. -
Lines 21-24
But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,
And even Despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy. -
Lines 25-28
Then did I check the tears of useless passion—
Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine. -
Lines 29-32
And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?
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“Remembrance (Cold in the earth)” Symbols
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Snow and Winter
In “Remembrance,” the speaker imagines the grave of her beloved covered by “deep snow.” Later, the speaker describes how in the 15 years since her beloved died, “fifteen wild Decembers … have melted into spring.” These descriptions of snow and winter (through the specific month of December) capture the passage of time vividly and tangibly within the poem.
At the same time, snow and winter work symbolically. Snow is white, and in a thick layer, it is opaque (i.e., you can't see through it). As such, this deep layer of snow can be taken—one on level—as representing how out of reach the beloved is to the speaker. This is, of course because the beloved is dead. Snow, cold, and winter, then, broadly represent what they often do in literature: death.
Winter is the time of year when trees drop their leaves and plants die or become dormant until spring. December, which stands in for winter more broadly the poem, also contains the winter solstice, or the darkest day of the year when there is the least sunlight. Darkness usually represents a kind of internal state of darkness, pain, or loneliness. All of these things underscore the speaker's immense grief following the loss of her beloved; her world is now without the light and warmth he brought to it, leaving her in a perpetual winter state.
It's also interesting that the speaker imagines those Decembers "melting into spring"—which briefly suggests that grief, too, may figuratively melt as the speaker moves on and finds new life. Yet the poem reminds the reader that this is an ongoing cycle; there have been 15 of these Decembers, so even if this landscape temporarily turns to spring, winter, too, will return, and the beloved will still be dead and buried “in the earth.” The poem thus takes the symbol of winter and subtly transforms it, showing how the state of winter, for the speaker, is ongoing—even when that heavy pile of snow melts, the speaker feels its weight.
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Wings
In the second stanza, the speaker asks whether her “thoughts no longer hover” where her beloved is buried, “Resting their wings” over his grave. This image creates a metaphor for the speaker’s thoughts (and perhaps, too, for the speaker’s soul), imagining them as a kind of independent being, like a bird or angel.
Although the poem doesn’t specify what kind of winged being the speaker’s thoughts are, the image of wings in itself is significant and symbolic. Wings often symbolize freedom and hope, as well as an ability to transcend or move beyond the earth and even one’s own body. Within the poem, the image of wings suggests that the speaker, despite being physically distanced from where her beloved is buried, can still travel there internally and “hover … forever” at that place.
Wings can also symbolize angels, or beings who inhabit spiritual realms. In a sense, then, the wings suggest that the speaker, in thinking of her beloved, inhabits a state that is spiritual, transcendent, and even sacred. This embodiment is closer to what one might imagine after death, so the poem suggests that the speaker is already truly with the beloved in spirit, if not in body.
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Light
In stanza 5, the speaker describes her beloved as a “light,” saying, “No later light has lightened up my heaven, / No second morn has ever shone for me.” In the first line, the speaker compares her beloved to a sun that can lighten up the sky or the speaker’s horizon. In the second line, the speaker compares her beloved to morning, or the arrival of light after darkness. These images are then echoed in the following stanza, when the speaker refers to the “golden dreams” of the past; the color gold recalls the deep yellow and golden hue of sunlight.
Just as darkness can symbolize internal pain, sadness, and loneliness, or a state of being lost and without hope, light symbolizes the opposite. It conveys illumination, hope, insight, happiness, life, and joy. The speaker’s statement that she has experienced no “later light” or “second morn” since the death of her beloved, then, means that since his loss she has also lost everything that light stands for.
At the same time, by conjuring such clear images of sunlight, morning, and gold within the poem, the speaker makes them present, and also makes present their attendant experience: those experiences of joy and hope that have been lost. In this way, by remembering her beloved, the speaker also in a sense keeps alive that light, if only in acknowledging its passage.
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“Remembrance (Cold in the earth)” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
At the end of “Remembrance,” the speaker asks how, once “drinking deep” of the most profound grief, “that divinest anguish,” she “could seek the empty world again.” This question, and the image of “drinking deep,” works to develop the earlier images of water in the poem, which appeared in the descriptions of the “wave” of time and “tide” of the world.
But this image of “drinking deep” also works as a subtle allusion to the moment in the Bible, when, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus contemplates his crucifixion and asks God to “remove this cup from me.” In this moment, Jesus compares his coming crucifixion and suffering to a cup from which he will have to drink and asks if it is possible for God to take the cup away from him, so he won’t have to undergo this suffering.
In the poem, then, the image of “drinking deep” takes on a larger meaning, as does the phrase “divinest anguish.” The poem implicitly compares the speaker’s grief and suffering with the sacred suffering described within the Bible, when, according to the scripture, Jesus too suffers out of love and so leaves the earthly world. So too, for the speaker, in the face of this “divinest anguish,” the world becomes “empty.” Through this allusion, the poem suggests that true love between people, and the grief that people experience in losing someone they love, is not so different from divine love, and divine suffering.
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Anaphora
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Repetition
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Personification
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Metaphor
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End-Stopped Line
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Enjambment
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Caesura
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Aporia
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Consonance
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Assonance
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Imagery
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Alliteration
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"Remembrance (Cold in the earth)" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Remembrance
- Severed
- Hover
- Heath and fern-leaves
- Morn
- Bliss
- Cherished
- Check
- Weaned
- Languish
- Rapturous
- Anguish
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A remembrance is, simply, the act of remembering something; it can also refer to a memory itself. As the title of the poem, the word suggests that the poem is a remembrance, or an act of remembering the beloved.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Remembrance (Cold in the earth)”
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Form
“Remembrance” has 32 lines broken up into eight rhymed quatrains (four-line stanzas). Each quatrain is also strongly end-stopped, making them feel sure-footed and self-contained. As the speaker of “Remembrance” interrogates her own constancy and faithfulness in the face of time and change, the poem’s stable form implicitly suggests that the speaker, likewise, is consistent in her love for the person who has died.
The poem also works in several modes. First, the poem is an elegy, a type of poem that mourns someone who has died. “Remembrance” mourns the speaker’s beloved. That beloved actually seems present within the poem, as the speaker addresses the loved one directly.
“Remembrance” can also be read as a persona poem or a dramatic monologue. As a child, Brontë had invented an imaginary world, Gondal, with her sister, Anne. Gondal was an offshoot of an earlier imaginary world invented by all four of the Brontë children. She wrote numerous poems and plays, as well as prose, about the characters she imagined inhabiting this world. Although Brontë wrote “Remembrance” when she was 27, this poem too seems to have first been written within the framework of Gondal; the original manuscript bears the title “R. Alcona to J. Brenzaida”—the names of two characters from within the imagined realm. The original manuscript also referred to “Angora’s shore,” instead of “Northern shore”; “Angora” is another reference to these imaginary kingdoms. As a persona poem, “Remembrance” inhabits the voice of the fictional character Rosina Alcona, the wife of King Julius Brenzaida, who is killed during a civil war.
Notably, though, when Brontë published the poem in 1846, she removed any references to Gondal, and retitled the poem simply “Remembrance.” Now, the poem can be read as a persona poem, but that is not the only way it can be read; the speaker’s identity, and the narrative context of the poem, are left open-ended.
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Meter
Some lines in “Remembrance” fall into rough iambic pentameter, meaning they have five poetic feet, each with a da-DUM syllable pattern. Take line 3:
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
However, the meter is highly irregular throughout the poem. Even in this example, there's a dangling extra unstressed syllable, something called a feminine ending. All the odd-numbered lines in the poem end this way, in fact. Even-numbered lines, meanwhile, feature masculine endings, with clear final stresses. Take line 2, which concludes with "dreary grave!"
Also, note that many lines in the poem begin with a stressed syllable. For example, the first line reads:
Cold in the earth—
This opens the line with a trochee (stressed-unstressed). The stressed syllable at the beginning of this line and others gives a sense of energy and momentum, imbuing the poem with urgency and authority.
Within the lines, the poem also makes use of trochees. For example, in line 25:
Then did I check the tears of useless passion—
After the opening dactyl, the poem employs an alternation between stressed and unstressed syllables, with a stressed syllable starting each foot.
Because of its frequent use of trochees and feminine endings, the poem overall creates a pattern of falling rhythm, as the lines begin with stressed syllables and “fall” from those stresses to unstressed syllables. Within the lines, individual phrases replicate this falling pattern. These sound patterns create music in the poem, but they also work in connection with the poem’s meaning, as though the speaker, and the poem, are falling or dropping to the poem’s inevitable conclusion, that of the world being truly “empty” to the speaker in the face of their irretrievable loss.
Importantly, though, the poem also works against this falling pattern in several places, through the use of clusters of two stressed syllables. Sometimes these are specifically spondees, and sometimes they are two other feet that bump up against each other with the same effect. Notable instances of these two stresses in a row include, in line 2:
Far, far
In line 10:
brown hills
In line 13:
Sweet Love
In line 14:
world’s tide
And in lines 19 and 20:
life’s bliss
These moments are striking against the background of falling meter in the poem. They convey the speaker’s strength and steadfastness, and a kind of work or energy to hold back the “tide” of time, change, and grief. At the same time, because they are pairs, they also invoke the pair of the speaker and the beloved, suggesting that the two are held together through the speaker’s love, within the poem’s music.
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Rhyme Scheme
At a first reading, “Remembrance” appears to use a fixed, regular rhyme scheme throughout, in which each stanza rhymes:
ABAB
These line endings often change in their sounds as the poem progresses (meaning the A and B sounds in stanza 2 differ from those in stanza 1). Overall, this pattern gives a sense of stability and continuity to the poem, reflecting the poem’s theme of constant, enduring love over the passage of time.
However, the poem also includes important variations to this rhyme scheme. First, in the first stanza the poem repeats the word “thee” at the ends of the first and third lines. Usually, a line-ending rhyme is not an exact word repetition, so this moment of identical rhyme stands out, calling attention to the centrality of the “thee,” the beloved, in the speaker’s mind.
This repetition is then echoed in stanzas 4 and 5, when the poem repeats the long /e/ A rhyme sound with “thee”/ “me” and “me”/ “thee.” Here, the poem returns to the “thee” emphasized at the beginning, as well as “me”—the speaker. As in the first stanza, this repetition emphasizes the importance of the beloved being addressed; at the same time, it pairs the speaker with the beloved through rhyme. Most importantly, this emphasis on the speaker and the beloved interrupts the linear progression of rhyme endings in the poem, as though the speaker’s address to the beloved interrupts, or works against, the inextricable forward movement of time.
There are also several moments in the poem that gain emphasis because the line endings are close, but not full rhymes. These slant rhymes appear in stanza 3 (“spring”/ “suffering”), stanza 5 (“heaven”/ "given"), stanza 7 (“passion”/ “hasten”), and stanza 8 (“pain”/ again”). These slight divergences from the rhyme scheme help to give the poem a spoken, natural quality.
At the same time, as they appear more and more as the poem progresses, they suggest a kind of growing crisis, as though the speaker is working to maintain composure and discipline in the face of unmanageable loss that threatens to overwhelm or destabilize her, and poem, at any moment. The poem’s rhyme scheme, then, works at the level of music to enact what the poem describes: the speaker’s constant, ongoing experience of living with the pain of grief.
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“Remembrance (Cold in the earth)” Speaker
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The speaker of “Remembrance” is anonymous, and the speaker's gender is also left unknown. Some evidence about the speaker's age can be gathered from the poem, as the speaker mourns a "Love of youth" who died 15 years earlier, suggesting that the speaker is probably somewhere around 30 years old. "Youth" can be interpreted in different ways, of course, so the age of the speaker is also ambiguous.
One interpretation of the speaker is based on the title of the original manuscript, in which the poem was titled “R. Alcona to J. Brenzaida.” Rosina Alcona and Julius Brenzaida where characters in an imaginary kingdom called Gondal, which Brontë had invented with her sister, Anne, when they were children. Emily Brontë wrote numerous poems and plays about the characters within this world. According to this reading, the narrative context of the poem comes from a story about Gondal: the character Rosina Alcona was married to Julius Brenzaida, a king who was assassinated during a civil war. In the poem, then, Alcona mourns the death of her beloved, Brenzaida, 15 years after his death.
However, it is worth noting that when Brontë published the poem, she changed the title and removed all references to Gondal. In its current form, the speaker of the poem remains open-ended: it could be Brontë herself, or a version of her; it could be Rosina Alcona; it could be another persona entirely, or some combination of all of these. To avoid subject confusion in this guide, we've identified the speaker as female and her beloved as male in keeping with the original manuscript. It is entirely possible to read the poem differently.
What is clear within the poem is that the speaker loves this beloved truly and in a lasting way, that the speaker experiences grief acutely, and furthermore that though the speaker is depicted as passionate, she is also strikingly self-disciplined, even austere. Within the poem, the speaker describes how she “denied” her own wish to die and join the beloved and went on living “without the aid of joy.” These descriptions suggest that the speaker of the poem is a person of remarkable strength and resilience, with a force of will equal to the power of her love.
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“Remembrance (Cold in the earth)” Setting
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There are two main settings of the poem: where the speaker lives, and where the beloved is buried, which is located at some distance from the speaker, “Over the mountains, on that northern shore.”
What is striking is that the setting that the speaker inhabits is never really described, except through its distance from the grave of the beloved. In a sense, then, at the level of its imagery, the poem enacts the idea that the world is “empty” to the speaker without the beloved; the only landscape that is fully imagined and described with color, season, and physical detail is the place where the beloved is buried. In this setting, the speaker describes “deep snow” over the beloved’s grave; imagines the passage of time in “those brown hills”; and specifically describes the gravesite “where heath and fern-leaves cover” the one who has died.
The speaker’s reference to “heath,” which is a word for open grasslands within Britain, places the burial site of the beloved within England, and the phrase “that northern shore” could refer to the coast of England near the North Sea. However, this setting is not identified in the poem according to official or political markers; it is significant only as the burial place of the person the speaker loves.
A third, underlying setting within the poem is that of the world itself, with its “tide” that might carry the speaker away. This larger setting of the world, and of “Time,” give context and weight to the poem, and contrast with the specificity with which the beloved’s burial place is envisioned.
The speaker, in a sense, seems to inhabit all three settings: she physically occupies one that remains undescribed, at a distance from the beloved; her thoughts and soul “hover” in the landscape where her beloved is buried; and on a larger scale, she must navigate the almost overwhelming forces of time and change in the world as a whole.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Remembrance (Cold in the earth)”
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Literary Context
There are several layers of literary context important to “Remembrance”: the context of the collection within which the poem was first published; the placement of the poem within Brontë’s work as a whole; and the larger literary context within which Brontë wrote and lived, and with which “Remembrance” is in dialogue.
“Remembrance” was published in 1846, as part of a collection titled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Actually, “Currrer,” “Ellis,” and “Acton” were pseudonyms for Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, all three of whom were writers; the sisters adopted male pseudonyms because of the prejudice against female writers within the reading public. While the collection famously sold only two copies, in the commentary it did receive the poems by “Ellis Bell” (Emily) were particularly praised. This collection was followed a year later by the publication of Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature.
Within Emily Brontë’s work, the poem is considered part of what are called the Gondal Poems, or poems that Brontë wrote about an imaginary kingdom, Gondal, that she had invented with her sister Anne when both were children (Gondal was an offshoot of a kingdom first invented by the three Brontë sisters with their brother, Branwell). In the original manuscript from 1845, the poem was titled “R. Alcona to J. Brenzaida.” This title is a reference to characters from Gondal; Rosina Alcona is married to the King Julius Brenzaida, who is killed in battle. However, Brontë removed all references to Gondal when she prepared the poem for its 1846 publication.
The new title she gave the poem, “Remembrance,” is striking partly for the way it brings the poem into conversation with the broader literary context of Brontë's time. As the critic Janet Gezari has pointed out, when the poem was published, “Remembrance” was already the title of well-known poems by other poets, including poems by Robert Southey, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron. Brontë would have read and known these poems, so her choice of title suggests a conscious decision, as a female writer, to place her poem in direct discourse with poems by some of the most famous male writers of that period.
The time frame of “Remembrance” places the poem, and Brontë’s work as a whole, within the Victorian era. In fact, the Victorian era was the time when the novel, as a form, rose to prominence, and Brontë’s Wuthering Heights was certainly part of this movement. Yet some scholars have argued that Brontë’s work is more closely aligned with Romanticism (the movement which came before the Victorian era) and the Gothic, because of her work's preoccupations with passionate love, the meaning of life and death, and the soul.
Among the writers she influenced, Emily Brontë's work was known and loved by the American poet Emily Dickinson, writing on the other side of the ocean.
Historical Context
Reading “Remembrance” now, it might be shocking to encounter the speaker describing a “Love of youth” who died 15 years before, presumably when both the speaker and the beloved were young. Yet the early death that the speaker describes, as well as the speaker’s acute awareness of all of the physical realities that death entails, are in keeping with the time the poem was written; untimely and early death were common occurrences in 19th-century England, as a result of illness, unsanitary living conditions, poverty, and the absence of modern medicine. In fact, Brontë wrote “Remembrance” three years before her own untimely death at the age of 30, which was most likely a result of unsanitary water at her family’s rural home in Yorkshire.
This context is important to understanding “Remembrance,” because while the speaker describes experiencing a grief and loss that is intensely private, this grief would also have been relatable to many readers of that time. Within a context when death and all of its realities were in many ways a part of everyday life, the poem shows the speaker attempting to look directly into this reality and find a way to cope with it.
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More “Remembrance (Cold in the earth)” Resources
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External Resources
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The Gondal Poems — View the original manuscript of Emily Brontë’s Gondal poems, and read more about the poems.
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Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell — Read all of the poems in the collection that Brontë published with her sisters in 1846. This collection included “Remembrance.”
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Biography of Emily Brontë — Read about Emily Brontë's life and work and view a portrait of her via the Poetry Foundation.
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Emily Brontë and Emily Dickinson — Read this article at the Guardian about Emily Brontë and Emily Dickinson, including the text of a poem by Brontë that Dickinson loved, "Now Coward Soul is Mine."
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The Romantic, Victorian, and Gothic Movements in Literature — Read more about different aspects of the Romantic and Victorian movements and the Gothic in this article from the British Library.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Emily Bronte
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