The Full Text of “Sonnet 75: One day I wrote her name upon the strand”
1One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
2But came the waves and washed it away:
3Again I wrote it with a second hand,
4But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
5"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay,
6A mortal thing so to immortalize;
7For I myself shall like to this decay,
8And eke my name be wiped out likewise."
9"Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise
10To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
11My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
12And in the heavens write your glorious name:
13Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
14Our love shall live, and later life renew."
The Full Text of “Sonnet 75: One day I wrote her name upon the strand”
1One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
2But came the waves and washed it away:
3Again I wrote it with a second hand,
4But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
5"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay,
6A mortal thing so to immortalize;
7For I myself shall like to this decay,
8And eke my name be wiped out likewise."
9"Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise
10To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
11My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
12And in the heavens write your glorious name:
13Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
14Our love shall live, and later life renew."
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“Sonnet 75: One day I wrote her name upon the strand” Introduction
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"Sonnet 75," also called "Amoretti 75," was published by English poet Edmund Spenser in 1595 as part of Amoretti, a cycle of 89 sonnets that recounted Spenser's courtship and marriage to his second wife, Elizabeth Boyle. The poem explores the power of poetry to immortalize its subjects, presenting this sonnet itself as bestowing Boyle's name with a kind of eternal life. The poem also showcases Spenser's unique stanza and sonnet style, which would later be named after him. He first perfected the Spenserian stanza in The Faerie Queen, his most famous work and the first epic poem to be written in modern English.
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“Sonnet 75: One day I wrote her name upon the strand” Summary
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One day I wrote my beloved's name in the sand on the shore, but the waves rolled in and erased it. So I wrote it a second time, but when the tide came in it just ate up all my hard work again. "You're being silly and prideful," my beloved told me, "in your futile attempts to make something mortal last forever. I'm going to die and decay one day, and, just as the ocean erases my name from the shore, everything about me will disappear." "That's not true," I replied. "Less noble things can plan to die and disappear, but you're going to live forever through fame. My poetry will immortalize your incredible goodness and write your magnificent name in the heavens. Even when death has come for the entire world, our love will live on forever."
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“Sonnet 75: One day I wrote her name upon the strand” Themes
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The Immortalizing Power of Poetry
“Sonnet 75” is a poem about the power of poetry itself. The poem’s speaker wants his beloved to be remembered forever, even as she argues that such notions are vain and pointless; she’s a human being, and as such her name and memory will one day disappear along with her mortal body. The speaker, however, believes that her beauty and virtue deserve everlasting fame, and that he has the ability to immortalize her, to grant her a kind of triumph over death, through his poetry.
Despite the speaker’s deep admiration for his beloved, the poem makes it clear that she is subject to the inevitable passage of time. The fact that the speaker repeatedly writes his beloved’s name “upon the strand” (or shore) only for the ocean to quickly wash it away suggests that time’s passage is relentless. The image of her name disappearing from the strand also suggests how fleeting people’s marks are upon the world; after her death, time will remove all proof of her ever having lived.
The beloved dismisses the speaker’s attempts as mere hubris (that is, pride), insisting that because she is a mortal, she will someday die, and that nothing the speaker does can change this simple fact. She argues that people aren’t meant to live forever, and that her name will disappear from history just as the ocean keeps washing the speaker’s writing from the sand.
While the speaker acknowledges that lesser mortal things will indeed die and all traces of them will disappear, he insists that his beloved’s admirable and virtuous name deserves to live forever—and that it will, through his poetry. The speaker says only “baser things,” or things with no real value, should be forgotten, but his beloved deserves to be “eternized.” In other words, the speaker thinks his love is too important, too rare and precious, to be forgotten, and so he will use his poetry to capture it for all time. His beloved will “live by fame,” the speaker says, meaning that through the power of poetry her name will be remembered by generations to come. In this way, their love will live forever, “renewing” each time someone reads this very poem.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Sonnet 75: One day I wrote her name upon the strand”
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Lines 1-2
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:The speaker writes his beloved's name on the "strand" (a.k.a. the seashore), but the ocean waves come and wash it away. The imagery of these opening two lines is simple, concise, and effective: the waves here symbolize the passage of time, which will one day "wash away" the memory of the speaker's beloved.
Right away, the speaker also hints that the poem will be about poetry itself: it isn't just the beloved's name that's washed away, but the speaker's writing.
Not surprisingly, then, these lines are particularly poetic! They're packed with consonance, alliteration, and assonance:
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:Note how long /ay/, /m/, and /w/ sounds heighten the speaker's language. This poem isn't casual or conversational, all these sonic devices suggest, but rather carefully crafted to be both musical and memorable. The pull of the long /ay/ sounds pulls readers forward, just as the waves are pulled toward the shore. The air-filled whoosh of the /w/ sounds, meanwhile, evokes the rush of the waves lapping against the shore.
Typical for a sonnet, the meter here is iambic pentameter (meaning that each line is made up of five iambs, poetic feet made up of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable). Take the second line:
One day | I wrote | her name | upon | the strand,
But came | the waves | and wash- | ed it | awayNote that some readers might scan the first foot as a spondee ("One day"), but such a variation is minor. In Spenser's day, the word "washed" would also be manipulated into being pronounced as a two-syllable word in order to maintain the poem's rhythm ("washéd").
Iambic pentameter immediately gives the poem a feeling of structure, not to mention a very noticeable rhythm, and announces that this is a poem with a capital "P." In other words, this is a poem that is very aware of being a poem.
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Lines 3-4
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. -
Lines 5-8
"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." -
Lines 9-10
"Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: -
Lines 11-12
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name: -
Lines 13-14
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew."
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“Sonnet 75: One day I wrote her name upon the strand” Symbols
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The Tide/Waves
Waves and the tide in general symbolize life's the passage of time. Just as waves erode the shoreline and erase all evidence of the speaker's writing, time destroys human beings and erases all evidence their lives.
The speaker writes his beloved's name on the seashore because he wants to sing her praises and have her be remembered, but the waves come wash away his efforts. He repeats this process, but to no avail: the tide comes back and again erases his work. This will just keep happening, the poem suggests; waves will never stop lapping the shoreline, meaning that the speaker's attempts to leave evidence of his beloved behind are futile.
The passage of time, it follows, is just as ceaseless and inevitable: the speaker can't stop death from approaching, nor can he stop time from erases traces of his beloved's life on earth.
Such waves/tide symbolism was common concern in Elizabethan poetry; poets were thinking not only of the memorability of their subjects, but also of their own work and the legacy of English literature in generally. Shakespeare, for example, explored the same theme and used waves as a symbol of passing time in his "Sonnet 60."
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“Sonnet 75: One day I wrote her name upon the strand” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Simile
The speaker uses a simile in lines 7-8, comparing the way that ocean washing away the beloved's name from the shore to the way that time inevitably erodes all memory of people's lives.
The poem opens with the speaker writing his beloved's name "upon the strand," and the waves coming and undoing the speaker's work. The speaker's beloved, meanwhile, insists that the speaker's efforts are futile because she's mortal and thus "shall like to this decay."
The simile indicates that the beloved is making a comparison between her own eventual demise and the disappearance of her name from the strand: one day, she, like her written name, will be erased from the world. Her body will be eaten up by time just as surely as the speaker's writing is eaten up by the powerful ocean waves.
In fact, she goes on, all traces of her time on earth will one day disappear altogether. Everything her name stands for will eventually be "wiped out likewise": her life, her legacy, and any memory of her whatsoever will disappear as easily as words written in sand.
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Antanaclasis
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Polyptoton
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Consonance
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Alliteration
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Assonance
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Parallelism
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Personification
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"Sonnet 75: One day I wrote her name upon the strand" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Vain
- strand
- Dost
- Assay
- like to this
- Eke
- Quod
- Baser
- devise
- Eternize
- Whenas
- Subdue
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In its first use ("vain man"), "vain" means excessive pride. In its second ("that dost in vain assay"), it means that the speaker's attempts are futile and ineffective.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Sonnet 75: One day I wrote her name upon the strand”
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Form
The poem takes the form of a Spenserian sonnet, which is something of a cross between the traditional English (or Shakespearean) sonnet and an Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet.
Like an English sonnet, this poem's 14 lines can be broken into three quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet. Its rhyme scheme differs from an English sonnet, however (more on that in the Rhyme Scheme section of this guide).
The Spenserian sonnet, like most sonnets, contains a volta, in which the speaker responds in some whatever issue or dilemma the first part of the poem has established. In this case, the arrival of the volta in line 9 is made more obvious by virtue of the fact that there is a literal debate happening between two people. The "problem" presented in the sonnet's octave, or first eight lines, is the fact that the speaker's beloved is mortal, and thus subject to the passage of time. The last six lines of the poem (the sestet) act as a rebuttal to the beloved's assertion that the speaker's efforts to immortalize her are in vain.
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Meter
"Sonnet 75" is written in iambic pentameter, meaning that each line contains five iambs: feet with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (da-DUM). Take the first line for example:
One day | I wrote | her name | upon | the strand
Iambic pentameter is the stander meter for sonnets, and gives the poem its pleasing cadence. The rhythm is generally pretty steady throughout; the speaker seems quite in control of his "verse," which makes sense given that he's using this poem to immortalize his beloved.
There are a few places where the reader might be inclined to think that Spenser missed a beat, such as in the second line, which on a first scan appears to only have nine syllables. However, in Spenser's day, it was not uncommon to pronounce the word with two syllables: "washéd."
Line 5 begins with an actual deviation from the meter, opening with a spondee instead of an iamb:
"Vain man," | said she, | "that dost | in vain | assay
The spondee (a foot made up of two stressed syllables in a row) stands out. It deliberately interrupts the smooth rhythm of the poem, and draws attention to the fact that the beloved isn't just in the speaker's mind: she exists as an actual, separate person in the world with thoughts and opinions of her own. Note the end of her speech:
And eke | my name | be wip- | ed out | likewise."
The beloved's speech ends with another spondee, so that these forceful feet bookend her opinion and emphasize the fact that she disagrees with the speaker.
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Rhyme Scheme
This poem follows the specific rhyme scheme associated with the Spenserian sonnet:
ABABBCBCCDCDEE
This rhyme scheme is more complex than that traditionally associated with English sonnets because of its linked nature: rather than each quatrain containing its own separate pattern, the pattern moved across quatrains, almost like thread stitching up a seam: the final rhyme of the first quatrain is "prey," which then rhymes with the very next line ("assay").
The poem is also filled with assonance that echoes the end rhymes and makes things sound all the more musical and poetic. Note, for example, all the long /ay/ sounds of lines 1-5, which not coincidentally chime with the three B end rhymes in these lines.
Of course, the most important rhyme in the poem is in its final couplet. This kind of couplet (rhyming lines of iambic pentameter) is known as a heroic couplet, and, as that title suggests, it concludes things on a powerful note. The words "subdue" and "renew" underline the poem's central concern: despite death being able to "subdue" the whole world, the love between the speaker and his beloved with "renew" every time someone reads this poem. The firm rhyme makes this final pronouncement all the more confident and memorable.
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“Sonnet 75: One day I wrote her name upon the strand” Speaker
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While the speaker of a poem doesn't always overlap with the poet, in this case it's safe to say that the speaker is Spenser himself, or at least some version of him. All the sonnets in Amoretti, including this one, were written for his wife, Elizabeth Boyle. So when the speaker says that he "wrote her name upon the strand" or that "in the heavens" he'll write her "glorious name," he's specifically referring to the name Emily Boyle. Very little is known about Boyle outside of Spenser's poems, so one might say that Spenser succeeded in keeping her name alive!
Spenser not only wanted to commemorate his wife's character; he also wanted England to have a great national literature on par with that of the Italians and the Greeks. This sense of ambition is evident in the poem when the speaker says that his beloved "shall live by fame" and that his verse "shall eternize" her virtues. Regardless of whether one thinks of the speaker as Spenser himself or as an anonymous lover of someone who will eventually die, the important thing is that the speaker is someone who understands the lasting value of poetry: its ability to preserve in language something that would otherwise be forgotten.
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“Sonnet 75: One day I wrote her name upon the strand” Setting
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The poem takes place on "the strand," which is just another word for the shore: the place where a beach meets the sea. The speaker uses the waves to symbolize life's movements and the passage of time, but the waves themselves are also literal: they roll in with the tide and wash away the name that the speaker has written in the sand. This simple act—writing a loved one's name in the sand—speaks to the very ordinary scene that prompted the speaker's grand ambitions to immortalize his beloved in poetry. In the end, this is just a man and a woman sitting on the shore enjoying each other's company, and not wanting this beautiful moment or their love to end.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Sonnet 75: One day I wrote her name upon the strand”
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Literary Context
"Sonnet 75" was published as part of Spenser's Amoretti, a cycle of 89 love sonnets that Edmund Spenser wrote for his second wife, Elizabeth Boyle, in 1595. The sonnets depict Spenser's courtship of Boyle, which took place over the course of three months in the spring of 1594. It was published alongside The Epithalamion, which Spenser wrote as an ode to Boyle on their wedding day, in a single volume. Scholars have suggested that Spenser wrote one sonnet per day while courting Boyle, thus explaining the cycle's obsession with the passage of time.
Spenser wrote during the English Renaissance, a time when English poets revisited in classical languages and ideals while also playing with new forms and techniques. Modern English poetry got its start during this intense period of revival and experimentation, which also saw increases in literacy and publishing and thus expanded the reach and impact that poets had on society.
Many poets of Spenser's time grappled with the question of artistic legacy, and, in turn, wrote poetry about the power of poetry itself. William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 60," for example, also uses the tide to represent the passage of time, and repeatedly praised poetry's ability to immortalize its subjects in his work. "Sonnet 18" (which famously begins, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?") is another of Shakespeare's poems that explores a theme almost identical to that of "Sonnet 75."
Spenser, for his part, hoped to create a renowned national literature for England similar to that of Italy, which was the cultural epicenter of Europe at the time. The Faerie Queen, his most famous work and the first epic poem to be written in modern English, was in part an attempt to put English poetry on the map, so to speak. Along with his contemporary such as Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, and, of course, Shakespeare, Spenser did indeed contribute to the formation of an internationally recognized literature.
One of, if not the most famous forms in poetry is the sonnet, which began in Italy and was perfected by the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca in the 1300s. English poets eventually developed their twist on the form, which would go on to be widely known as the Shakespearean sonnet (given that no English poet is more famous for their use of this form than Shakespeare!). Spenser, however, developed his own sonnet form that was something of a blend of the Italian and English versions but with a different, and arguably more complicated, rhyme scheme. Like most Renaissance sonnets, however, Spenser's usually dealt with matters of the heart.
Historical Context
Spenser lived during the reign of Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch to rule over England. At the time, there wasn't a career path for someone who wanted to write poetry. One of the few ways to earn a living as a poet (not to mention find an audience) was to find patronage through the royal court. By dedicating work to someone with social status and wealth, a poet might gain employment or even the opportunity to marry into a more prominent family.
Unsurprisingly, then, Spenser spent much of his life attempting to gain favor in the Queen's court. While Spenser's early attempts were unsuccessful, his friendship with fellow poet Sir Walter Raleigh would turn out to be extremely beneficial for Spenser. Raleigh showed great interest in Spenser's work and eventually helped him publish the first three books of his epic poem, The Faerie Queen. He also arranged for Spenser to go to England and read from the poem to Queen Elizabeth in person.
This proved advantageous when the Queen expressed delight at the poem and afforded Spenser a pension of 50 pounds a year, an amount that was unheard of for a poet at that time. Thanks to this change in fortune, Spenser became one of the best known and influential poets of the Renaissance and of English poetry in general.
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More “Sonnet 75: One day I wrote her name upon the strand” Resources
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External Resources
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Introduction to the English Renaissance — An introduction to the cultural and literary changes occurring during the time of Spenser's England.
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Edmund Spenser's Life and Work — Learn more about the poet at the Poetry Foundation.
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Amoretti III: The Sovereign Beauty — Another of Spenser's Amoretti poems, written for his wife Elizabeth Boyle.
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A Reading of the Poem — Listen to a recording of "Sonnet 75" read by Jordan Harling.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Edmund Spenser
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