assignment 5 - Megan Woodrum

"I wish I could remember that first day"

BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

I wish I could remember that first day,

    First hour, first moment of your meeting me,

    If bright or dim the season, it might be

Summer or Winter for aught I can say;

So unrecorded did it slip away,

    So blind was I to see and to foresee,

    So dull to mark the budding of my tree

That would not blossom yet for many a May.

If only I could recollect it, such

    A day of days! I let it come and go

    As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow;

It seemed to mean so little, meant so much;

If only now I could recall that touch,

    First touch of hand in hand – Did one but know!

    There is an obvious rhyme pattern throughout this poem. The author uses rhyme to usher the reader through her poem. Areas of the poem such as with the lines "So blind was I to see and to foresee, So dull to mark the budding of my tree" it rushes the reader forward by having three rhymes within two lines. This gives the effect of overlooking, and hurriedness that the narrator had instead of noticing when she first came into contact with her current love. But lines like "If only I could recollect it, such" it breaks and gives a pause, then later in the poem when the author rhymes it with "much" and "touch" brings the reader to pause at the choppiness and reminds them of its rhyme mate and makes the reader be thoughtful on the entire idea. The poem's rhymes remain loose throughout the entire thing, which i believe to be because of at the rate the rhymes occur; there is no specific, "rhyme or reason" to their existence. 

Rossetti, Christina, "I Wish I Could Remember That First Day", Poetry Foundation, ,https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/ , Oct 9, 2014

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