The poem �One day I wrote her name upon the strand� (rpt. In Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson, Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 10th ed. [Boston: Wadsworth, 2009] 1003) written by Edmund Spenser is a poem of true love. What this poem is basically trying to portray is that when you love someone or something that love does not have to end. Love is eternal and in this case it will last into what the author believes to be heaven. The central purpose of this poem is to make one realize that our lives are not forever, our relationships are not forever, but love is. Love is the only thing that can break the rules of mortality. Love is forever and will last into our next lives if our path leads us to heaven, thats where our love will follow us.
This poem, consisting of 14 lines and a rhyme scheme of (abab bcbc cdcd ee), is a Shakesperian sonnet. Also a sonnet like this has three quatrains and a couplet in iambic pentameter.
It starts out with a man writing a woman's name in the sand but it washes away. He tries again with his other hand, but a second time it washes away. �But came the tide, and made my pains his prey�. The first eight lines of this poem illustrates a man that is trying to make what is perishable, last forever. This man tried to write her name upon the strand twice, he is trying to do the same thing twice and hopes to expect different results, this illustrates insanity on the mans part. After that, a woman say �Vain man� she calls this man vain because he writes in the sand expecting for the name to stay there, and it obviously wont because the tide will wash it away. She goes on to say � that dost in vain assay A mortal thing so to immortalize. For I myself shall, like to this, decay, And eek my name be wiped out likewise�. Basically what this woman is trying to say is that this man is a fool in the aspect of life and relationships. Just like the sand is washed away from the tide, this woman he cares for will die eventually and there is nothing that he can do to control that because immortality is not real.
The poem goes on to say �Not so,� quoth I, �let baser things decise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens write you glorious name,� These lines in the poem the man claims he can make their love last forever despite mortality. He says he can do this by using his verse. He goes on to say that when people die,(because people do die because they are mortal) that everyone will still have knowledge of their love because it will be eternal.
The last two lines of the poem are the rhyming couplets, these are the most important lines of the poem because they have so much meaning and they conclude the poem. �Where whenas death shall all the world subdue Our love shall live, and later life renew.� What the speaker is trying to portray is that they may live mortal lives but their love will last forever. They will be together until death and even after death they will reunite into the kingdom of heaven, where they will live forever.
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he is saying that people are easily forgotten, especially once they are gone. time often slips thru and many efforts are made in vain. he did not know his writings would still be read today, so how could he be saying that she will always be remembered? memories can forget, paper destroyed, and he could have never been known. so he was only keeping her alive for the short amount of time, for all he knew, 400 hundred years later (currently) we would never know of either of the two. he is saying time washes away all things, good and bad, weather we
want it to or not.