An essay comparing “Remember” and “Break, Break,

Break”

Written by: Mohammad Naseem Pasarlay

Pasarlai_naseem@yahoo.com

The nicest and famous Genre of literature is poetry. A poet writes happy, funny or tragic poems. It is related to the time, place, and situation, if two poets are happy and they write poems, they will be both happy in their poems but the way of saying, rhyme, structure, selecting words and other characteristics will be different, as will as they are sad. “Remember” by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) a British poem which is written when a beloved one is going to the silent land, and “Break, Break, Break” by Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), an English poet of the Victorian era and author of the “The charge of the light Brigade” are also two poems which are both in tragic mood but they differs according to many other characteristics.

First, the mood of the both poems is tragic and hopeless. In “Remember” the lady poetess who is on the end of her life says:

“Remember me when I am gone away
Gone far away, far away into the silent land”

In the above verse we can feel the grief of her, she says “Remember me”, and she says this because it gives the reader a special kind of sympathy and makes him feel tragic.

“When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray”

From the above two verses we also understand the grief of the poetess, the poetess also uses the pronouns “Me” and “You” to specify that she is not saying to anyone else. In the above verses we also see the tone of the poem. It is very whispery, soft and agonizingly and she repeats “Remember me” but after line eight, the tone changes and at last she says:

“Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad”

She says this because she does not want her beloved one to be irritated by her mentions. In “Break, Break, Break” the tone is fury, angry, and enraging, I can know this because he starts and begins with

“Break, Break, Break”

And also from the coming verse we understand the tone, the poet angrily says:

“And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.”

In this poem we also see the hopelessness and disappointment,

“But O for the touch of vanished hand,
And the sound of voice that is still!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.”

He says “vanished hand” and the “voice that is still” because he has no hope he will have his beloved one anymore, he is sure that will never return.

Second, according to the structure they have different forms, the poem “Remember” is a sonnet which has fourteen lines in each line it has ten syllables which creates an Iambic pentameter poem, there is no simile, alliteration and personification used, but metaphor is used as a euphemism.

“Remember me when I am gone away
Gone far away, far away into the silent land”

Here “silent land” is a euphemism used in place of grave or graveyard, this euphemism shows the experience of the poet, I understand it is not the saying of a common person. The meter is also not regular in the poem, but, the “Break, Break, Break” has four stanzas, in each second line of stanza it has rhyme, it does not have a regular meter. There is no simile, metaphor and personification used but two euphuisms are used:

“But O for the touch of vanished hand,
And the sound of voice that is still!

In the above verse the “vanished hand” and “voice that is still” are euphuisms for a (died or lost beloved one).

Third, the image in “Remember” is not clear we cannot see where the lovers are? Are they in hospital? Are they in there house? Or somewhere else, and also we can not see what they are doing? Are they standing? Or sitting, but somehow we can see an image, but that is also not clear but dim,

“The days they walk together and counseling for future planning”. In the poem “Break, Break, Break) the poet has used such words that creates a clear images and pictures of the sea coast, the stones and crags, the fisherman’s children playing there, the ships going to the sea harbor and the angry man telling loudly his heart’s voice to the waves of the sea, and shows how he is angry for his lost, so, we can say that the images are showed in both poem but one is dim and another one is clear.

In conclusion, both poems has some similarities and differences, both poems has the same mood, both of them has hopelessness and disappointment, in both poems the poets are worried and unhappy about their beloved ones, but one is going to go to silent land and the other’s has already went, and the poet is disappointed about that he would not have it anymore. They are also somehow same in the tone but very little, the image is dim in the first one but very clear in the second one. In the first one the poet is advising to

his beloved one but in the second he lost all his hopes. They both carry a big tragedy in themselves.