Iambic Pentameter Sonnet
When it comes to the form and meter of "Remember," there are two things you need to know: iambic pentameter and sonnet. Iambic pentameter, now that sounds familiar. You've probably heard that phrase tossed around here and there because, well, it's the only the most common type of meter in English poetry. In a poem of iambic pentameter, each line is composed of five ("pent-" means five) iambs. An iamb is type of beat (often called a foot) that contains an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (daDUM). To hear what five of them together sound like, check out line 1:
Remember me when I am gone away.
Scanning through the poem, we've noticed that pretty much every line in "Remember" is very regular iambic pentameter (often, poets like to get cute and throw little curve balls in), a sign that Rossetti was still a young poet learning the ropes, so to speak.
Now that we've covered that base, we need to talk about the form of this poem. It's got 14 lines, which means it's a sonnet. There's a whole lot to say about sonnets—heck, there are tons and tons and tons of books and articles written about them, like this one. For now, you just need to know that sonnets have 14 lines, and that they come in two basic types: the Shakespearean (named after our pal William "the Man" Shakespeare) and the Petrarchan (named for Petrarch, the famous Italian dude who pretty much invented the form).
"Remember" is a Petrarchan sonnet. This means that the poem can be divided into a group of eight lines (called the octave, lines 1-8) and a group of six lines (the sestet, lines 9-14). In most Petrarchan sonnets, there is a noticeable change of direction around line 9 (called the volta, or turn). Sometimes the sestet will solve a problem posed in the octave, while at others the octave will explore one idea, but then the sestet will take things in a completely different direction.
And you know what? This is kind of what happens in "Remember." In the first 8 lines of the poem, the speaker is obsessed with telling her beloved to remember her after she dies. Starting around line 9, however, the speaker starts to shift her focus away from remembrance to forgetfulness. By the end of the poem, the speaker actually says it is better for her beloved to forget about her than to remember her and feel sad. Sheesh, the two sections of this poem are almost polar opposites. Talk about a change of heart.
Now besides this structural characteristic, Petrarchan sonnets also have fairly specific rhyme scheme. Most of the time, the octave, follows this scheme: ABBA ABBA. The rhyme scheme of the sestet, on the other hand, is much more flexible, with a whole variety of options on the poetic table. The octave of "Remember" follows your basic ABBA ABBA scheme, while the sestet has the unique, but still perfectly legal, scheme CDD ECE.
Now, it's our job to tell you that rhyme schemes aren't just for kicks. They are an important part of any poem's sound and meaning. In the case of this poem, Rossetti's choices actually mimic the poem's general trajectory. In the octave, we start with A, then get a few B's, then back to A, and then back to B, In the sestet it's very similar—C, then a few D's, then E, then C again, then E again. These rhyming patterns are cyclical, meaning things always manage to come back to where they started.
Of course, one of the major ideas in "Remember" is the cyclical nature of life. Think about it like this: the speaker is thinking about death. She knows she will die, and that death is pretty much permanent. But she also knows that remembering somebody is a way of keeping them alive, at least metaphorically. In other words, we could summarize the poem as saying "there is life, but then there is death, but then there is kind of life again"—A to B to A again. So heads up, out there: as you continue to study this poem, be alert to the various ways in which its rhymes reinforce that meaning. Rosetti was using both form and content to get her ideas across.