Summary
The speaker describes how empty her life has been without her beloved. Then she goes on to say she's begun to find a way to keep living by letting go of the memory of him as time has passed. She ends by stating that she must stop living in a world that no longer exists and let go of her painful memories, in order to experience her current life.
Analysis
In the latter half of the poem, the speaker begins to focus more and more on her current life, depicting the ways in which she has slowly begun to recover and heal. Memory is portrayed here as a double-edged sword; whatever comfort she finds in remembering happier days, she feels equivalently devastated when she is reminded that they are long over. She comes to acknowledge that if she is to find any meaning in her present, she must stop living in a past that is empty.
The fifth stanza is almost entirely a declaration of pain. The speaker says that she has never found equivalent joy in her life after her love's death ("No later light has lightened up my heaven, / No second morn has ever shone for me;"). All of her happiness died with him ("All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given, / All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee."). The repetition of "no" and "all my life's bliss" accentuates the heightened mood of this particular section. It gives the impression that the speaker is laying out all of her suffering, showing that she has been totally unable to find any comfort in the wake of this loss. It also shows that while her lover is actually dead, she has been living a life that is hollowed out, as if a large part of her died with him. In the absence of this happiness, her days appear to be a matter of just going through the motions of life. However, in the following stanza, things begin to take a turn. She describes how she started to rebuild herself ("But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,") in this devastating aftermath ("And even Despair was powerless to destroy,"). She begins, very slowly, to find a way forward: "Then did I learn how existence could be cherished, / Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy." She notes that she still feels the absence of "joy" but is able "cherish" her current life.
In the next stanza, she expands on this idea. She describes the slow process she went through as her grief lightened ("Then did I check the tears of useless passion— / Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;"). Her "tears of useless passion" and "yearning" subsided, opening up the possibility for healing. She contrasts this with her initial feelings: "Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten / Down to that tomb already more than mine." Previously, her "burning wish" was to be "down to" her "tomb," meaning she wished to join him in death. She is demonstrating the progression of her feelings through the sharp difference in these states. She feels as though she has regained her reason for being alive, even if her life with her lover cannot be restored. In the final stanza, she says that she has begun to resist the temptation of memory ("And, even yet, I dare not let it languish, / Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain;") as it is too damaging to revisit. Her use of the word "rapturous" works effectively against the word "pain," adding to the juxtaposition of feelings she experiences in remembering her lover. The last two lines of the poem further emphasize this idea: "Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish, / How could I seek the empty world again?" She is saying that if she lives in her memories ("drinking deep of that divinest anguish") then she will be unable to inhabit the "empty world" anymore. If she chooses to cling to the past, she will only find more pain. She won't be able to keep living in the present, as her lover is no longer part of her world. It is a haunting sentiment, showing the speaker still caught between the impulse to remember and the desire to move on.
In the end, "Remembrance" is not just a statement on memory or loss. It is a poem dedicated to showing the complex difficulties of living with the memory of a lost loved one. The speaker struggles to mourn appropriately the death of her beloved and find meaning in the life with which she has been left. As she charts her conflicting emotions, she is able to reveal how challenging it is to live in the aftermath of such a loss.
