Edmund Spenser’s poem “One Day I Wrote Her Name” is a beautiful love sonnet from his collection Amoretti, written in 1595. The poem talks about the speaker’s deep love for his beloved and his desire to make her name last forever. In the beginning, the speaker writes his beloved’s name in the sand, but the waves keep washing it away. This makes him realize that everything in life is temporary and will eventually fade away. However, he refuses to give up and decides to make her name and their love eternal through his poetry.
Critical analysis of the poem One day I wrote her name
Table of Contents
The poem is written in a traditional sonnet form, which means it has 14 lines with a specific rhyme pattern. Spenser uses this structure to express the powerful idea that while physical things like sand and waves may not last, poetry has the power to keep memories and love alive forever. Through simple yet elegant language, Spenser conveys the timeless message that true love can be immortalized through the written word, making “One Day I Wrote Her Name” a touching and enduring piece of literature.
Line by line analysis of the text of the poem
Her name –the name of his lady love, probably Elizabeth Boyle.
Upon the strand –on the sea beach
One day….strand –the poet tried to preserve her name on earthly elements. So he wrote her name on the strand.
But came the waves –but the waves came.
Washed it away –swept away the name. 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.
Again I wrote it –the poet made another attempt. His eagerness to preserve his love on earth led him to make the second attempt.
With a second hand –for the second time.
But came the tyde –but once again the high tide came.
Made my…pray –made the poet’s pains his (seas) prey. The sea washed away his second effort to write her name on the strand. The poet wrote his lady love’s name second time but sea smashed it sea makes him paining for faliuring to write the name of the lady love.
The poet’s labour to write his lady’s name on the sandy shore was the prey to the devouring sea. Human efforts are negligible before the eternal follow of nature or the ruthless lashes of time.
Vayne man –foolish person who makes vain efforts vain man is the poet himself.
Sayd she –said the poet’s beloved.
That doest … assay –the attempt of the poet to write her name on the strand was futile. Or, the attempt to write her name on the strand was vain affort.
Mortall –mortal being i.e. the lady herself.
So to immortalize –the poet’s attempt was to immortalize a mortal being.
Vayne man… immortalize –the lady love sharply criticized his attempt to write her name on the sea beach. It was all in vain, for a mortal being would not be immortalized. The poet, according to her, made a vain assay, for a mortal being, like herself, could not be immortalized.
To enliven the name of his lady love, the poet wrote her name on the sea shore. But the waves come and smashed the name. In the same way to immortalized a mortal man is the vain display of the poet because in front of times winged-chariot there were nothing remains eternally.
I myself –the lady herself.
Shall lyke… decay –shall decay alike, have to decay.
And eek … lykewize –her name is also certain to be removed in the same way. Just as the waves washed away the name of the lady, written by the poet on the strand her very name or existence would be obliterate altogether from the world.
Eek –also
Wapyed out –smashed
Not so –this not so. The poet’s love is not mortal.
Quod I –the poet said in reply
Baser things –gross physical elements.
Devise to dye in dust –is subjected to decay and death in dust, or turn to dust after death.
Let baser…dust –gross material elements are subjected to decay and death.
The poet hints at the superiority of his love to other material elements including physical bodies.
Devize –devise
But you shall live by fame – the poet is quite confident. His lady love shall not be subjected to decay. She will ever remain in the poet’s verse that shall make her famous.
My verse –the poet’s verse written in her praise.
Vertues rare –exceptional qualities.
Eternize –turn eternal, make immortal.
My verse …eternize –the poet’s verse, celebrating his love, shall immortalize the rare qualities of immortal woman.
The poet’s verse remains her immortal not in physically but in memory
In the heavens –this may mean “to eternity”, but a more appropriate sense is, perhaps, ‘in the sky’.
Wryte your glorious name –the poet shall record his lady love’s name as an everlasting element of glory.
Your glorious name –of course, her name will be made glorious by the poet’s verse.
The entire faith is prompted by an intense passion of love.
Where whence –while.
Death shall –death triumphs overall and destroys all.
Death keeps every objects of nature under control.
Our love shall live –their love shall not perish.
Later life renew –make life fresh and new.
our love shall… renew –the poet feels definite of the survival of his love thorough his verse. This love will live ever fresh and new in his verse
Critical Analysis of the poem
“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. “Amoretti” was published in 1595 and a series of short poems called “Anacreontics and Epithalamion”. The volume was titled “Amoretti and Epithalamion Written not long since by Edmund Spenser”. 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.
Publication:
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), one of the greatest Elizabethan English poets, is well-known for his sonnets. The present sonnet “One day I wrote her name upon the strand” was published in 1595 in his famous sonnet sequence “Amoretti”. The present sonnet is sonnet No. 75 in the collection of 88 sonnets. ‘Amoretti’ is an Italian word meaning ‘little loves’ which refer to the sonnets so dear to the poet.
Background/Context:
All 88 sonnets in Edmund Spenser’s sonnet cycle ‘Amoretti’ are love sonnets. The lady in question was Elizabeth Boyle, a pretty Irish woman, with whom Spenser was in a relationship and they later married. The present sonnet depicts Spenser’s courtship of Boyle, which took place over the course of 3 months in the spring of 1594.
Also, Spenser belongs to the Elizabethan age. He wrote this during the English renaissance, a time when English poets followed the classical languages and ideals while also playing with new forms and techniques.
Setting:
The poem “One Day I wrote her Name” presents a dramatic setting. The vast sea serves as a background here. There are two lonely lovers who enact their story of love. The absolute loneliness is pierced by the presence of the two human beings. There are high waves tormenting them by washing the name of the ladylove the speaker writes on the sand. They are talking to each other and they are talking of love.
Title:
Spenser did not allot individual titles to each of his sonnets. He finished his job by just allotting mathematical numbers to them. When we mention any of his sonnets, we have to choose either the original number of it or the first line of the poem or invent a suitable title for it.
For the present poem ‘Amoretti LXXV’, the first line “One day I wrote her name upon the strands” serves as an appropriate title. It refers to the writing of the name of the ladylove which was removed by the waves. The lover then takes resolution to write it at a place where no destructive force such as death would be able to do any harm to it.
Summary:
In the poem “One Day I Wrote Her Name,” the poet describes how he tried to make his lover’s name last forever by writing it in the sand. However, the waves kept washing it away, erasing her name each time he wrote it. His lover tells him that it’s pointless to try because she, like her name in the sand, will eventually fade away and be forgotten.
The poet disagrees and insists that his love for her will make her eternal. He believes that by writing about her in his poetry, he can make her live on forever, even after they both have passed away. Through his verses, their love will be immortalized and remembered forever.
In simple terms, the poem highlights the power of poetry to capture and preserve love, making it timeless and everlasting, despite the inevitability of death.
Themes:
The Immortalizing Power of Poetry:
“Sonnet 75” is a poem about how poetry can make someone live forever. In the poem, the speaker wants his beloved to be remembered always. However, she thinks that this is impossible and pointless because she is a human being, and like all humans, her name and memory will disappear when she dies. The speaker believes that her beauty and goodness deserve to be famous forever and that he can make this happen through his poetry.
The poem shows that even though the speaker admires his beloved a lot, she cannot escape the passage of time. The speaker writes her name on the beach, but the ocean waves wash it away quickly. This shows how time erases everything and how people’s marks on the world are temporary. After she dies, all evidence of her existence will be gone.
The beloved tells the speaker that his efforts are prideful and useless. She says that because she is mortal, she will die one day, and nothing he does can change that. She believes that people are not meant to live forever, and her name will be forgotten just like the ocean washes away the writing in the sand.
The speaker agrees that most things will die and be forgotten, but he insists that his beloved’s goodness and virtues deserve to live forever. He says that only unimportant things should be forgotten, but his beloved is too special to be lost to time. Through his poetry, he believes he can make her name live on forever. He says that she will be famous and remembered by future generations. In this way, their love will be renewed every time someone reads the poem.
In the sonnet “One Day I wrote her Name”, Edmund Spenser presents poetry as a means of immortalizing his beloved and her rare virtues.
In the octave, the speaker presents the problem of mortality. As he writes his ladylove’s name on the sandy sea-shore, it gets washed away by the tides. Then his mistress stresses on the mortal nature of things. She herself is mortal and will die someday. So, how can her name remain there forever? It is just a futile effort then to write her name there.
In the sestet, the speaker suggests a resolution. He proposes to write a poem glorifying her goodness. Though all other things will fall prey in the hands of death, she will live on in the readers’ minds through his verse. Thus, the speaker’s beloved can achieve the height of immortality.
“My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:”
So, we see that the entire poem is framed to present this single important idea that poetry can be an effective medium to eternalize a mortal thing.
Love:
Like all other Amoretti sonnets, the present one is also a love poem. We see the speaker getting romantic in his ladylove’s presence and writing her name on the sand. When it is proved to be a vain attempt, he finds a far better idea to immortalize her. He vows to write her in his verse as a means to eternalize her.
Understandably, the speaker and his beloved are in a genuine love relationship. That is why the lover is so much concerned with her mortal nature and so eager to immortalize her. In the last line of the poem, the speaker says –
“Our love shall live, and later life renew.”
It seems, the lover is not only worried about her beloved but also their love. He wants to eternalize not only his mistress but also their love. Their pure and unparalleled love will live on through his verse. And he also wants their love to inspire others (lives renew) in future when there is no love and hope. Thus, the poem sings of love.
Immortality:
Immortality is definitely a major theme in Spenser’s poem “One Day I wrote her Name”. The mortal nature of human beings and all other things in the world makes the speaker worried. That is why he is in the lookout for a way out to immortalize his mistress and their love.
The lady says that the lover is trying in vain to immortalize a mortal thing when he writes her name on the shore. But the speaker thinks otherwise. According to him, things can be immortal if they remain in people’s hearts. So, he decides to write about their love and his mistress in his verse. This way, when death will subdue all other things, their love will remain in the readers’ minds and will thus achieve immortality.
Symbols:
The Tide/Waves:
The waves or tides in the poem “One Day I wrote her Name” symbolize the passing of time. Just as the waves erase the evidence of the speaker’s writing by washing the shoreline, time also destroys human beings and erases their identity.
The lover writes his beloved’s name on the seashore but the waves wash it away. He writes it again, but in vain. It makes the speaker’s attempt to immortalize his beloved futile. Similarly, death is inevitable. The speaker can’t stop death from approaching. In fact, every object in this world, living or non-living, will be erased with the passing of time.
The name:
The speaker writes his mistress’s name on the shore but the waves wash it away twice. This reminds the lady that she too will be erased from this world like her name getting washed away. The name becomes a symbol for the beloved herself.
Again, we hear the speaker almost say, “Well, I have a better plan. I’m going to write your name in my verse then.”
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name
Thus, the word ‘name’ is used repeatedly in the poem as a symbol to mean something more substantial – the beloved and her goodness. It signifies one’s identity.
Critical analysis of the poem One day I wrote her name
Literary Devices:
Simile:
A simile is a direct comparison between two different things generally using ‘as’ or ‘like’.
“For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.”
In the above extract, the speaker’s beloved compares herself to her name written on the shore. She will be erased from this world just as the writing is getting washed away. Similarly, her name will be removed from the world altogether with her death. These comparisons are made directly using ‘like’ and ‘likewise’. These are examples of simile in the poem.
Antanaclasis:
Antanaclasis is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated within a sentence, but the word or phrase means something different each time it appears. For example,
“Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay”
In the sentence the first “Vain” means foolish person, here is the poet himself and in the second “vain” refers to futile activity of the poet.
Polyptoton:
Polyptoton is a stylistic device where words derived from the same root are repeated in a sentence. For example –
“A mortal thing so to immortalize;
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”
In these two sentences the word ‘mortal’ and ‘immortalize’ come from the same group ‘mortal’. And the word ‘life’ and ‘lives’ refer to the same group ‘life’.
Consonance:
Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in nearby words. Here are some examples from the poem –
“But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,”
In these sentences repetition of consonant sounds are found in these highlighted portion in the poem.
Alliteration:
Alliteration is a sub-category of consonance. It is the repetition of consonant sounds in the beginning (or, stressed syllables) of nearby words. Take some examples –
But came the waves and washed it away:
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
“Not so,” (quod I) “let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”
In the poem in ‘made my’ the ‘m’ sound, in ‘pains his prey’ the ‘p’ sound, in ‘devise to die in dust’ the ‘d’ sound, in ‘verse your virtues’ the ‘v’ sound, in ‘Where whenas’ the ‘wh’ sound, in ‘love shall live, and later life’ the ‘l’ sound are repeated many times. So these are the alliteration.
Assonance:
Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in nearby words. A few examples from the poem are in the highlighted portion of the poem given below–
“But came the waves and washed it away:
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
“Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay,”
Parallelism:
Parallelism is a figure of speech in which two or more elements of a sentence (or series of sentences) have the same grammatical structure.
“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”
In the poem the part of the sentence “I wrote” is repeated again. So it is called parallelism.
Personification:
Personification is the attribution of human qualities to non-human things.
“But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.”
In the above line, tide has been personified. It has been treated as a hungry hunter who is hunting as a ‘prey’ the speaker’s writing on the sand. The poet also uses the pronoun ‘his’ to make the personification clear.
Extended Metaphor:
In Edmund Spenser’s “Sonnet 75,” the extended metaphor is in these lines:
“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.”
In these lines, the poet writes his beloved’s name in the sand, but the waves wash it away. He tries again, but the tide erases it again. This extended metaphor compares writing her name in the sand to trying to make something last forever. The waves and tide represent time, which erases everything. The metaphor shows that physical efforts to make something permanent are pointless, but poetry can make memories last longer.
Enjambment:
In Edmund Spenser’s “Sonnet 75,” enjambment is when a sentence continues from one line to the next without a pause. This happens between these lines:
“One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:”
Form:
The poem “One day I wrote her name” is a Spenserian sonnet. This type of sonnet is a mix between the English (or Shakespearean) sonnet and the Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet.
Like an English sonnet, this poem has 14 lines that can be divided into three quatrains (four-line sections) and a final rhyming couplet (two lines that rhyme). However, its rhyme scheme is different from that of an English sonnet.
A Spenserian sonnet usually has a “volta” or a turn in the poem, where the speaker responds to the issue or problem discussed in the first part of the poem. A volta is a rhetorical shift, or dramatic change in thought or emotion, in a poem. It’s also known as a turn, fulcrum, or hinge. In this sonnet, the volta happens in line 9, which is easy to spot because there is a debate between two people. The problem in the first eight lines (the octave) is that the speaker’s beloved is mortal and will eventually die. The last six lines (the sestet) are the speaker’s response, arguing that his poetry can make her immortal and preserve her memory forever.
Meter:
“Sonnet 75” is written in iambic pentameter. This means each line has five iambs, which are pairs of syllables where the first is unstressed and the second is stressed (da-DUM). For example, the first line goes like this:
One day | I wrote | her name | upon | the strand
There are some places where it might seem like Spenser missed a beat. For example, the second line looks like it only has nine syllables at first. However, in Spenser’s time, the word “washed” could be pronounced with two syllables: “washéd.”
Line 5 starts with a real change in the meter. It begins with a spondee instead of an iamb:
“Vain man,” | said she, | “that dost | in vain | assay
A spondee is a pair of syllables where both are stressed. This change interrupts the smooth rhythm of the poem and highlights that the beloved is a real person with her own thoughts and opinions. Notice the end of her speech:
And eke | my name | be wip- | ed out | likewise.”
Her speech ends with another spondee. These stressed syllables at the beginning and end of her speech emphasize that she disagrees with the speaker.
Rhyming Scheme:
This poem uses a special rhyme scheme called a Spenserian sonnet:
ABABBCBCCDCDEE
This rhyme scheme is more complicated than the one used in English sonnets because it links the quatrains together. Instead of each quatrain having its own separate rhyme pattern, the rhyme pattern moves across quatrains, connecting them like a thread. For example, the last rhyme of the first quatrain is “prey,” which rhymes with the first line of the next quatrain (“assay”).
The poem also uses assonance, where similar vowel sounds are repeated to make the poem sound more musical and poetic. For instance, in lines 1-5, the long /ay/ sounds echo the end rhymes and add to the musical quality of the poem.
The most important rhyme in the poem is in the final couplet. This couplet is called a heroic couplet, which means it has two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter. This couplet ends the poem on a strong note. The words “subdue” and “renew” emphasize the poem’s main idea: although death can conquer the whole world, the love between the speaker and his beloved will “renew” every time someone reads the poem. The strong rhyme makes this final message more confident and memorable.
