The poet Christina Rossetti is chiefly remembered now for the poem ‘Remember’ and the intriguingly strange ‘Goblin Market’. But, for me, ‘The First Day’, her short and subtle poem about forgetting is her most memorable achievement. It is a curious love poem – how the moment of first meeting her future beloved went by unnoticed. The speaker of the poem: ‘let it come and go / As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow’.
It serves to remind us that the quiet seeds of some latent possibility may already be sown, ready to blossom some future day!
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!
