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  • Essay / Rhyme Patterns in Rossetti's "Remember" and Longfellow's "The Cross of Snow"

    Death is the only and inevitable truth of life, and those who have loved ones must one day accept that they will have to live through the deaths of others. throughout their lives. “Remember” by Christina Rossetti and “The Cross of Snow” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow both feature narrators who must face the reality of death. While the narrator of "Remember" wishes to live beyond the grave through the memories of his loved ones, he has accepted that they can move on so that he does not continue to burden them from beyond the grave ; the narrator of “La Croix des Neiges”, on the other hand, is unable to move forward after the death of his loved one. These striking characterizations when exploring the grieving process can be seen in the way their respective poets wrote the poems. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay The poets in each poem cleverly use a unique rhyme scheme to further their goal in developing the grieving process of their characters. In "Remember" by Christina Rossetti, the rhyme scheme is as follows: throughout lines 2 through 7, each line rhymed with the one next to it. This emphasized how the narrator, presumably soon to be dead, does not want to be forgotten after his death, as the fact that every other line rhymes with the next line made it seem like they were attached to each other. other and refused to let go. The narrator implores the audience to “remember me” throughout these lines. However, this pattern ends once the narrator accepts his death and his loved ones can move on, and there is a sense of closure by rhyming the first line of this acceptance, line 8, with the first line of the poem. Then there are gaps in the rhyme scheme, such as line 9 not having a line to rhyme with until line 13 as well as line 12 with 14. This increasing distance between rhyme pairs may represent the process of moving on after accepting death, and by moving forward, there could finally be a space between the spaces that the narrator had wanted to hold on to. A similar technique is also used in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Cross of Snow", in which line 1 rhymes with line 8, and throughout lines 2 through 7, each line rhymes with the one next to it, as if there was a feeling of attachment. and a refusal to move forward after the death of the narrator's loved one. This resembles the rhyme scheme technique used by the narrator of "Remember", as both narrators initially wanted to hold on after death. However, unlike the narrator of "Remember", the narrator of "The Cross of Snow" continues to refuse to let go since lines 9-11 rhyme with lines 12-14 in order. Although the rhymes are spaced three lines each because there is indeed a distance, they remain orderly and systematic, revealing that the narrator recognizes that his loved one has been dead for "eighteen years", but that time has become "immutable » since then and it has not evolved. Another technique used to develop the different grieving process in the two poems is the choice of words. Throughout “Remember” by Christina Rossetti, imagery is used to depict an atmosphere of remembrance. The narrator describes, when he wants to be remembered, that he wants to be remembered "day by day" after it is too late to "then counsel or pray." On the other hand, when the narrator wants the audience to move on, he does so in the hope of not leaving behind "the darkness and.