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Sonnet LXXV (75) One Day I Wrote Her Name, 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., "Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay,, A mortal thing so to immortalize;, For I myself shall like to this decay,, And eke my name be wiped 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.", , Explanation for the lines of the poem:, -, , Strand – sands of the beach., , -, , “A mortal thing so to immortalize” – why are you trying to make something, immortal which is mortal?, , -, , “eke” – before, , -, , Are we aware of our mortality? Are we aware of the mortality of our loved, ones?, , -, , “baser” – lower things, things which are less important, less pure, , -, , “you shall live by fame:” – you shall live because you are famous, , -, , My poetry will make your rare qualities eternal, live for long, , -, , You will be so famous that your name will reach even the heavens, , -, , And when death has subdued everything, quietened down everything, our, love shall continue to live and give inspiration to future lives.

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-, , The poet says he will make her so famous that her name wouldn’t be erased, even by death., , -, , Poetry as a way to immortalise poetry or things or events., , -, , Shakespeare says in many of his sonnets the same thing, that he is fighting, against time to save his lover’s beauty and good qualities. Time as the, greatest enemy., , Critical Analysis:, “One Day I Wrote Her Name” is the seventy-fifth (75th ) sonnet in Amoretti, a sonnet cycle, written by Edmund Spenser, which describes his courtship and eventual marriage to, Elizabeth Boyle. The sonnet is written in the form of Petrarchan sonnet, where the first eight, lines (octave) presents a problem whereas the next six lines (sestet) presents a solution to the, problem. Sonnet cycle means a collection of sonnets which have a singular theme, and, wherein the individual sonnets can be read as individual poems as well as part of single, poetic work., In the octave part, we see that the poet has a desire to immortalise his love or to make his, love immortal. As such he writes her name upon the sands of a beach. But the waves come, and wash away her name. He writes it the second time but the tides come and cover it. His, love says to him that he is making a futile effort, that a mortal thing like her cannot be, immortalized. For the simple reason that all human beings have to eventually pass away. The, lover knows that death would come to everyone one day., In the sestet part, we see the poet coming up with a solution to the problem. He says to his, lover that she will be immortalised or made immortal through his poetry. That he would, capture her virtues and qualities through his poetry and make them immortal. In this way, even death wouldn’t be able to erase her name. The poet says that once their love is captured, in his poetry, it would never die, but continue to live in his poetry. And that the story of their, love would be told again and again, as long as people keep reading his poems., In this way, we see the poet coming up with the solution of poetry as the means of escaping, or evading something as inevitable as death. We can see a similarity in the sonnets of, Shakespeare where he too wanted to immortalise his love by writing about him. Spenser,, through this poem, also mean to say that good art or good writing is immortal. This is proved, by the existence and continual reading of texts written centuries or even thousands of years, ago, the Bible for example, Mahabharata, poems of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, etc. The, poem can thus be read in two ways – as a love poem which expresses the fears and desires of, two lovers, and also as a commentary upon the nature of art, that good art can eclipse or, conquer death.