Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) One day I wrote her name upon the strand

Edmund Spenser

(1552-1599)

One day I wrote her name upon the strand

Edmund Spenser wrote “Sonnet 75″ during the 16th century in the Elizabethan era. It was written while he was in Ireland.

“In early 1595 he published Amoretti and ‘Epithalamion’, a sonnet sequence and a marriage ode celebrating his marriage to Elizabeth Boyle after what appears to have been an emotional courtship in 1594.

This group of poems is unique among Renaissance sonnet sequences in that it celebrates a successful love affair culminating in marriage.  

This poem, consisting of 14 lines and a rhyme scheme of (abab/ bcbc /cdcd/ ee), is a Spenserian sonnet. It has three quatrains and a couplet.

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away;

Again I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

The speaker is on a beach writing the name of his lover on the sand. It was washed away by the tide. Then he attempted to write it again, but the tide washed it away. He feels that the ocean is taunting him and making him suffer. The water is personified as someone who inflicts pain on the speaker. The tide is like an animal and his pains are the prey to the animal. The animal imagery used in this stanza indicates the unthinking, irrational nature of love.

“Vain man, “said she, “that doest in vain assay,

A mortal thing so to immortalize,   

For I myself shall like to this decay,

And eek my name be wiped out likewise.”

Assay = (middle English). To test the merit of something. Attempt

Vain= useless. Decay= to be destroyed gradually. Eek=also

His wife steps in to tell the speaker that he needs to stop what he is doing. He is trying to make a mortal thing immortal. She herself will grow old and die one day and her name will also be wiped out from human memory. The thought of inevitable death brings a tone of melancholy to an otherwise romantic poem.  

“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.

Quod=quoth (Middle English term meaning ‘said’/ ‘declare’.

Base= low, of inferior quality (16th century meaning). Devise= will/ desire (Middle English)

The speaker does not believe that to be true. He feels that others things should die but she should be able to live forever. Even if death occurs and she dies, she will live forever in fame. His poetry will make her rare virtues immortal. Her glorious name will be written in heaven by his poem.

Where when as death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Subdue= bring under control using force. Renew=begin again.

Even if his wife dies he feels that she is up in heaven where she belongs. Everyone in the world will eventually die. The love between the speaker and his lover shall flourish and begin anew when he comes and meets her in heaven. 

What the speaker is trying to portray is that they may live mortal lives but their love will last forever. They will be together until death and even after death they will reunite into the kingdom of heaven, where they will live forever.

The theme of immortality through poetry.

This is one of the major themes of this sonnet. In fact the immortality obtained through poetry is a favorite theme with the Elizabethans. Shakespeare highlights the theme in Sonnet 18 and in Sonnet 55. In Sonnet 18, Shakespeare assures his friend immortality thus:

"So long as man can breathe or eyes can see

So long lives this and this gives life to thee."

Again in Sonnet 55, the poet promises his friend that the latter will leave in the lines of the poem till the Day of Judgment.

"So, till the judgment that yourself arise

You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes."

Study notes by Dr. S. Sreekumar