Edmund Spenser - Amoretti LXXV - Summary & Analysis

About Author - 

Edmund Spenser was a Protestant poet. He rose to fame in England with his allegorical epic of 3 books  -The Faerie Queen. Queen Elizabeth made him a poet Laureate. 

The theme of the Sonnet - 

Amoretti LXXV is a sonnet of 14 lines written in the Petrarchan format of octave and sestet. The sonnet emphasizes the strength of love against all other mortal things in the world, and how love will overcome death.

Amoretti LXXV - 

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."

In the octave (the first 8 lines of the sonnet), Edmund Spenser narrates a glimpse of a moment he spent with his lover at the seaside. He wrote her name on the sand on the seashore, but then the waves came and washed it away. Since the poet was reluctant to give up, he wrote it again, but then a tide came and made his pain its prey, i.e., ate up the name written on the sand.  

Seeing this, the lover of the poet interrupted him and said that “Vain man that dost in the vain assay” (Proud and arrogant man that do vain and futile attempts), a mortal thing cannot be immortalized, and I myself would like to die and likewise my name will be eked, wiped out.

"Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your vertues 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."

In the sestet of the sonnet, the poet gives his reply to his lover, and he goes on, "Not so, let baser thing devise. To die in the dust" (Whatever you are saying is not true, let the baser and less noble thing devise, die, and disappear.) " but you shall live by fame" (But you, my love, are going to live forever through your own fame. My poetic verses will eternize your virtues and they will write your glorious name even in heaven.

Even when death has come for the entire world, the whole world will be subdued but our love shall live on forever and it will even live on in later life in the heavens.