Song by Christina Rossetti

Song 

 

Christina Rossetti

 

When I am dead, my dearest,

  Sing no sad songs for me;

Plant thou no roses at my head,

  Nor shady cypress tree:

Be the green grass above me

  With showers and dewdrops wet;

And if thou wilt, remember,

  And if thou wilt, forget.

 

I shall not see the shadows,

  I shall not feel the rain;

I shall not hear the nightingale

  Sing on, as if in pain:

And dreaming through the twilight

  That doth not rise nor set,

Haply I may remember,

  And haply may forget.

 

歌

 

我死去時， 親愛的，

請不要悲歌傷心；

不要給我玫瑰芳鄰，

也不要給我鬆柏成蔭：

我隻要綠草覆蓋

雨露綿長；

如你願意， 請把我懷念，

如你願意， 可將我遺忘。

 

我不再見蔭影，

我不再撫雨絲；

我不再聽夜鶯

帶著傷痛，悲啼：

我伴著暮光入夢

不再等朝陽夕陽，

也許我可以懷念，

也許我可以遺忘。 

 

開始讀英文詩沒有多久， 不知道 “Song” 如此流行， 有徐誌摩的譯文， 羅大佑的歌。 忍不住翻譯一下， 自娛和獻醜。 附上找到的分析。 有意思的是分析中提到的 pun， 無奈 lost in translation :-(

 

Tim Jackson, ‘01 

West Chester University

An Explication of Christina Rossetti’s "Song"

 

Death, as a subject, has inspired many writers to put pen-to-paper and create works that make an attempt to shed light upon this morbid idea. Christina Rossetti was one of these writers. The majority of her poetry grappled with her constant fascination with the concept of death, however, she was also very interested in the mystery of  transition. The transition between life and death entranced Rossetti, and she embodied her preoccupations with the mystique of transition in the creation of her poem entitled "Song".

 

The poem is divided up into two, eight-line stanzas, whereas each half of a stanza contains four lines of rhymed verse. The first stanza of the poem gives the reader a set of instructions on how the speaker is to be cared for once she is deceased. For the speaker, death seems to be a place where she has the ability to start anew, because she charges her readers not to grieve: "When I am dead my dearest/Sing no sad songs for me"(NAEL, 1584). Rossetti weaves, into this first stanza, her views on how one should accept death as a part of life. These views show the reader that the speaker of the poem puts herself on a plane of existence that has no physical form but, then again, is not entirely spiritual.

 

The second stanza of "Song" is a great deal more encoded than the first. In this stanza, the speaker envisions herself deceased. She detaches herself from all earthly form which is a reinforcement of Rossetti’s concerns in regard to being between two worlds.

 

"I shall not see the shadows, 

I shall not feel the rain; 

I shall not here the nightingale 

Sing on, as if in pain: 

And dreaming through the twilight, 

That doth not rise nor set," (NAEL, 1584)

 

Further proof of Rossetti’s fixation upon being caught between two worlds is the last lines of the quoted text: "And dreaming through the twilight/That doth no rise nor set" (NAEL, 1584). These lines illustrate that the speaker is in a state that is both spiritual, and corporal. Again, Rossetti has spliced her commentary back into the work and presses her readers to contemplate her notion of transition.

 

It is also interesting to note Rossetti’s choice of a "nightingale" within this work. John Keats also used the image of a nightingale in his work "Ode to a Nightingale". Keats’ nightingale was a thing of beauty and freedom that he wanted to emulate. Rossetti’s speaker, in death, loses the ability to hear the nightingale. Her nightingale is also of sharp contrast to Keats’ in that, her nightingale sings "in pain" and his did not (NAEL, 1584).

 

Another type of transition that occurs, is that of word choice and phrasing. Rossetti creates a pun, if you will, in the last lines of the work: "Haply I may remember/And haply may forget" (NAEL, 1584). The pun occurs with the word haply. By definition, haply means perhaps; however, if one would glance over the word it may be misconstrued and read as happily. These lines could very well take on a satirical view of death, which would strengthen the assertion that the speaker makes in the first stanza that death is not as unfortunate as it seems.

 

Through imagery, word choice, and phrasing, Rossetti achieves her goal in persuading the reader to comprehend the many facets of life and death. In order to understand this multi-faceted concept, she embeds "Song" with transitions. These transitions occur through the mechanisms mentioned above. The reader is also given insight as to how Rossetti deals with her preoccupations regarding death, as well as her fixation for transition.