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Edmund Spenser - Sonnet 75

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."

Added: on November 27th, 2005 at 9:54 PM | Viewed: 2222 times | Comments (5)


Sonnet 75 - Comments and Information

Poet: Edmund Spenser
Poem: Sonnet 75

Comment 5 of 5, added on May 30th, 2006 at 12:58 AM.

The poem is about the lover --Elizabeth Boyle-- being upset at the fact that she will never be able to love him forever because she will die like her name in the sand does. He tries to write her nme again but cannot. He realized that he was writing her name in the wrong place. He reassures her that if he writes her name in forever lasting fame, she will live on-- in memory at least-- and their love will follow them to heaven. It will once again join them when they are reencarntated. It's about how their love is eternal. side fact: Ammoretti was made for his love Elizabeth Boyle, who he later married.

Amber Bloom from United States
Comment 4 of 5, added on April 27th, 2006 at 11:34 AM.

I think Edmund Spenser’s sonnet deals with a shit he took while making love to a grotesque black women, in which both of them were covered in the “fungi” like substance. It has been proven that Spenser had a large amount of fecal matter packed in his colon at any given time and that it would release down his lower torso without his say. The first line, “One day I wrote her name upon the strand,” refers to the shit getting jam-packed in the woman’s hair. The end has more anger in it because that describes his wife breaking up with him after discovering the reminisce of shit on the baby, which they made love on top of and smothered to death.

Jack Quinn from United States
Comment 3 of 5, added on November 27th, 2005 at 9:54 PM.

The poem is actually depicting the idea of life and death. In 'Amoretti', by the time Sonnet 75 is written, the lover has already effectively shown his love for the beloved. They have already had their first kiss. Here, he is trying to immortalize their love, and immortalize her. It is a gift that he is offering her; a gift that poets have claimed to be able to offer for thousands of years now. During the first quatrain, the lover writes his beloved's name in the sand, but the tide washes it away (personification of the tide). The beloved speaks for the first time in this sequence, by telling him that she will wash away and die just as her name did. But he tells her that he will immortalize her through his verse.

M.Dooley from Canada

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