Not many people are aware that J.K. Rowling’s novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling, takes its title from a line in Christina Georgina Rossetti's poem, A Dirge. 

Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894) was a poet and the sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, an artist and poet who co-founded the famous avant-garde Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848.

Rossetti is renowned for writing popular Christmas carol lyrics such as “In the Bleak Midwinter” and “Love Came Down at Christmas.”

The image of the Virgin Mary in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's oil painting, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, was modelled after Rossetti, who posed for her brother.

Her numerous poems also motivated her brother and other artists. For example, a line from her poem “Who shall deliver me?' inspired Fernand Khnopff’s painting 'I lock my door upon myself.' 

Many of Rossetti's verses are set to music by well-known composers such as Jack Gibbons and Alexander Mackenzie.  

John Ireland set eight poems from her Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book to music in his song cycle Mother and Child.

I first came across her name while reading one of her children’s poems. 

However, I’m sharing her poem “Remember” from her collection Goblin Market and Other Poems. I’m unable to understand how a 19-year-old girl could write such a wonderfully crafted poem of pain and grief. 

Yes, when Rossetti wrote this poem, she was 19.

The poem is told not from the perspective of a mourner but rather from that of the person who's to be mourned, as she begs a loved one to remember her after her death.

Whether through her influence or her memory, she aims to remain a lasting part of her beloved’s life; what matters most is that their bond endures beyond death.

Read the poem - 

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no longer 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 planned:

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.