The Best Love Poem Ever?

A poetry analysis of one of my absolute favorites.

Amoretti LXXV: One Day I Wrote her Name

By Edmund Spenser

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.

"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."

"Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,

And in the heavens write your glorious name:

Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew."

I had a vague feeling that I had written about this before, but I could not find it. Please forgive me if I repeat myself.

It is difficult to pick one poem to be “the best” in any sense. That is like picking a favorite child. However, if I made a top 10 list, Spenser’s Amoretti LXXV (literally, “little love no. 75) would have to be on it. He actually wrote 86 of these sonnets, during the courtship of his wife. Generally, Spenser’s sonnets are seen as failing to hold up to the standard of the day. We may excuse him for this, since he had Shakespeare as competition.

In Amoretti, he begins by writing his beloved’s name in the sand as they walk along the beach. There is of course a metaphor here for his writing in general. The waves wash away her name, as time will wash away his writing. He tries again, with the same result. This time, he attributes intent and malice to the tides (and time) which destroy his work. Spenser deliberately crafted his Amorettis to accompany the seasonal readings and prayers of the Book of Common Prayer. It is therefore possible to suggest that he intends religious significance in this poem as well. He may be seeing past the waves or the decay of time itself to the root cause of all decay and destruction—that is, sin and the devil.

This should remind us of King Alfred’s reply to the Danish earls in the Ballad of the White Horse, which I have written extensively about. “Our God hath blessed creation, calling it good. I know what Spirit with whom you blindly band hath blessed destruction with his hand, but by God’s death, the stars shall stand, and the small apples grow.” Upon finishing his creation, God called it all good. It was only the devil who seemed to have a problem with it. Spenser may be hinting at this even in something so seemingly small as a love poem or a name in the sand. If God or his image in man should create something, the devil must destroy it. Satan is that toddler in preschool who impulsively knocks over everyone else’s block tower before they can even finish it.

His beloved knows this. Whether it be her name in the sand or her own self, eventually the same fate awaits them both. Hence: “For I myself shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wiped out likewise." But Spenser will not stand for it. Defying death, decay, time, and the devil, he declares: “My verse your vertues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens write your glorious name: Where whenas death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew.”

This calls to mind, of all things, Larry Bird. The basketball great was infamous for his trash-talk, but, as all his rivals said, he could back it up! On multiple occasions, Bird informed the other team exactly what he was going to do—where he would get the ball, how many dribbles he would take, where he would shoot the ball from—and then he would do it. Spenser trash-talked the devil and all his powers of destruction, declaring that their love would live forever through his verse. Here we are, over four hundred years later, still talking about it! He acknowledges that “death shall all the world subdue,” but he holds out hope for love and life even beyond death. “If a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my service I would wait, till my renewal should come. You would call, and I would answer you; you would long for the work of your hands.” -Job 14:14-15