Analysis of the Imagery in Christina Rossetti's Poem "Song"

The poem “Song” is a very meaningful poem that displays imagery in a quite unique way that the author Christina Rossetti portrayed. I found that the way that Rossetti shows and tells her poem it is sort of like a song that rhymes and tells about what she feels. Rossetti is talking to her dearest, which could be her husband, she tells him not to sing any sad songs on when she dies. This gives us the idea and image of her being dead and her husband possibly morning the loss of his beloved but not singing sad songs, maybe at her funeral.

Then she says “plant though no roses at my head, nor shady cypress tree”, this image shows us the readers that she does not want to be laid upon a bed of roses, and these roses could signify many different things, but in this case, it signifies death and peaceful mourning of a loss. The Cypress tree is also a symbol of death. The poem then goes on and says, “be as the green grass above me with showers and dew drops wet”, in this stanza Rossetti is probably talking to her dearest or even the audience to not be sad but be as the green grass that grows above her grave, and not to be sad or mournful but to think of better times. The showers give the image of rain that has fallen and the dew drops are an image of starting fresh and signs of being clean. At the end of the first stanza she is not bothered if she is remembered or if she is forgotten, this can imply that she does not really care, or that she is okay with anything and just to let things be the way that they are, even in circumstances such as this one. She is not afraid of death she knows that it is inevitable and that all of us one day will all die, and she has accepted that fact and is willing to go along with it, whether if other people follow or not.

In the beginning of the second stanza, she is telling us that “she will not be able to see any shadows that may appear in the light, she will also not feel the rain that falls to the ground, and she will not hear the nightingale sing on as if in pain”, when she says she will not see the shadows she cannot see it because she will be buried under the ground and her body will be lifeless, she will also not be able to feel anything especially the rain which signifies sad times, and the nightingale she would not here for the nightingale sings in pain or in mourning of a sad death which is the main character of the poem. We picture all of these things as we read through the poem, the shadows that appear in the dark, rain pouring down in subtle showers, and the sound of the nightingale in the night that echoes in the readers ears.

The poem goes on to tell us “dreaming through the twilight, that doth not set nor rise, haply I may remember, and haply I may forget”, this sentence to me can say an mean a lot, but as far as the story behind the poem goes, when she is in a deep sleep, in an endless dream through the early morning just before the sun rises when it is still very dark but very slowly becomes visible to see. She is there in that state that dreaming of the life that she lived and of what is now to come. While in that state in that place of twilight it is only by chance or pure luck that she will be able to remember all these things or that she me may forget everything, and she is not bothered by it not one bit, for she has already accepted it and is just letting it be.

I fond this poem to be most interesting, and I loved reading it of how Rossetti told it as if speaking in truth, which she might have been talking about herself in her own life, I just liked how she portrayed it. This is a fine piece of poetry in my opinion, and I would recommend it to others who enjoy writings like this one.