Sonnet 75 Lyrics
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed 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 wyped 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 heavens wryte your glorious name.
Where whenas death shall all the world subdew,
Our love shall live, and later life renew."
But came the waves and washed 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 wyped 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 heavens wryte your glorious name.
Where whenas death shall all the world subdew,
Our love shall live, and later life renew."
About
Genius Annotation
Be aware that this sonnet is from a series of 89 that Spenser wrote called Amoretti. All these sonnets were to do with him wooing a lady called Elizabeth Boyle. You’ll be happy to learn that in the end she did notice him and they ended up getting married in 1594 – don’t we all love happy endings!
By this time Spenser (1542-99) was 42 at the time and only lived another 5 years (almost not worth all the bother). It’s thought that the poem uses the theatre analogy because in the two years preceding all the theatres had been closed to try to prevent a plague spreading.
refer to the other page on this same poem (connected to the rest in the sequence):
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