Amoretti Sonnet LXXV

by Edmund Spenser

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 prey.
Vayne man! sayd she, that doest in vaine assay
A mortall thing so to immortalize;
For I my selfe 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 in fame:
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the hevens wryte your glorious name;
Where, when as death shall all the world subdew,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.