“One day I wrote her name”

Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)

From “Amoretti.” Sonnet LXXV.

ONE day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves, and washèd it away:

Agayne, I wrote it with a second hand;

But came the tyde, and made my paynes his prey.

Vayne man, say’d she, that doest in vayne assay

A mortall thing so to immortalize;

For I my selve shall like to this decay,

And eke my name bee wipèd out likewise.

Not so, quod I; let baser things devize

To dy in dust, but thou shall live by fame:

My verse your vertues rare shall éternize,

And in the heavens wryte your glorious name,

Where, when as death shall all the world subdew,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.