Edmund Spenser

This is a sonnet, not by Shakespeare to day, but by Edmund Spenser who was probably born in 1553, and definitely died in 1599. He is most famous for his poem The Faerie Queen, an allegorical fantasy, an immensely long poem which was intended to be longer. Here, however is his Sonnet 75, which for some reason has separated the first line from the rest of the poem….

One day I wrote her name upon the strand

But came the waves and washèd it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
“Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize,
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wipèd out likewise.”
“Not so,” quod I, “let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name.
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”

Edmund Spenser