One day I wrote her name

Sonnet 75, from Amoretti

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, 'thou do'st 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.'

'Not so,' quoth 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, when as death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.'

by

Edmund Spenser