Love, Death, and Forgetfulness
Christina Rossetti was obsessed with death, no doubt about that, but in a very strange way. Time and time again her poems about death (which are usually about what happens after death) are also weirdly about love and forgetfulness. Take "When I am Dead" as an example. There Rossetti gives her lover (her "dearest") a set of instructions and concludes with a line about forgetfulness ("haply may forget"). The same goes for another little charmer called "After Death", where the speaker imagines a man leaning over her dead body who, apparently, didn't really love her at all while she was alive. "Remember" explores very similar themes. It is a poem about dying, about love, about forgetfulness, and about how all those things relate to what happens after somebody kicks the proverbial bucket.