Read the poem and answer the following question.
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
In the poem, the phrase “gone far away into the silent land” refers to
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → death, spoken of in gentle words
The speaker does not say “when I die”.
- The poem says “when I am gone away” into “the silent land”. The silent land is the quiet world of the dead.
- The next line shows this. The beloved will “no more hold me by the hand”.
- Later she speaks of “darkness and corruption”, which means the grave and the decay of the body.
- So the phrase is a soft way of speaking about death.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: a long journey to a quiet foreign country — Incorrect. Misread: This takes the words at their face value. No real journey is meant. The rest of the poem speaks of death and the grave.
Option 3: a lonely place where the speaker grew up — Incorrect. Wrong time: The phrase looks ahead to what will happen to the speaker. It is not about the past.
Option 4: the quiet life the speaker will lead after marriage — Incorrect. Contradicted: Their future plans are the very thing that will end. The speaker talks of a time when the beloved will no more speak of “our future that you plann’d”.