Sonnet 75 by Edmund Spenser summary

 

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 hevens wryte your glorious name:

Where whenas death shall all the world subdew,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.

 

The speaker tells us that he wrote the name of his beloved on the shore (strand) one day. However, the ocean waves quickly erased the name he wrote in the sand. But the speaker tries again ignoring the waves.  Again, his attempt becomes futile. The beloved scolds the speaker for his vain or rather useless attempts.

She criticizes him for trying to immortalize something mortal, like her name in the sand. The beloved suggests that she herself will eventually decay or die, just like the name in the sand. She predicts that her name, too, will be erased or forgotten. The speaker disagrees with her and says that ordinary things should perish and decay. Instead, he believes that her name will live on through fame, contrasting it with perishable things. The speaker claims that his poetry will immortalize her rare and remarkable virtues. He suggests that her name will be written in the heavens, symbolizing its eternal nature. The speaker acknowledges that eventually, death will conquer everything in the world. However, he believes that their love will persist and be renewed in the afterlife.

In the Sonnet 75 Spenser explores the theme of the immortality of art and love through the act of writing the beloved's name on the sand and the subsequent erasure by the waves. But nobody can erase the name from the heart of the speaker. The poem ultimately expresses the idea that while human life is transitory, true love and artistic creation can endure beyond death.