Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume VI. Fancy. 1904. | | | | Poems of Sentiment: IV. Thought: Poetry: Books | | “One day I wrote her name” | | Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599) |
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ONE day I wrote her name upon the strand, | |
| But came the waves, and washèd it away: | |
| Agayne, I wrote it with a second hand; | |
| But came the tyde, and made my paynes his prey. | |
| Vayne man, say’d she, that doest in vayne assay | 5 |
| A mortall thing so to immortalize; | |
| For I my selve shall like to this decay, | |
| And eke my name bee wipèd out likewise. | |
| Not so, quod I; let baser things devize | |
| To dy in dust, but thou shall live by fame: | 10 |
| My verse your vertues rare shall éternize, | |
| And in the heavens wryte your glorious name, | |
| Where, when as death shall all the world subdew, | |
| Our love shall live, and later life renew. | | | | |
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