Amoretti LXXV: One Day I Wrote Her Name

 Amoretti LXXV: One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon The Strand

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 pray.

Vayne man, sayd she, that doest in vaine assay,

a mortall thing so to immortalize,

for I my selve shall lyke to this decay,

and eek my name bee wypèd out lykewize.

Not so, (quod I) let baser things devize

to dy in dust, but you shall live by fame:

my verse your vertues rare shall eternize,

and in the hevens wryte your glorious name.

Where whenas death shall all the world subdew,

our love shall live, and later life renew.

-Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)

[A series of eighty-eight sonnets, published in 1595 and probably written between 1592 and 1594 during the poet's wooing of Elizabeth Boyle.]