ONE DAY I WROTE
Sonnet No. 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.”
-Edmund Spenser
PARAPHRASE :-
One day I wrote her name (the poet’s beloved’s name) upon the strand, but the waves came in and washed it away. Again I wrote her name a second time. But the tide came in and preyed upon his labour of writing her name. She (the poet’s love) said, “Vain man that attempts, in vain, to immortalize a mortal thing. For I myself shall be, like this decay (i.e. decay of the ladylove’s name on the strand) and my name also shall be likewise wiped away.”
” Not so,” I (the poet) said, “mean earthly things may die and come to dust, but you shall live for ever by being celebrated in my verse. My verse shall eternise your rare virtues and write your glorious name in the heavens. Whereas death shall subdue all the worldly things, our love shall live and be freshened and enlivened in later life (i.e. in old age).
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
[A] Life of Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)
Of the early life and parentage of Edmund Spenser, the greatest non-dramatic poet of the age which found its most natural literary expression in the drama, we know little except that he was born in London in 1552. He was educated at the Merchant Taylors’ School and at Cambridge. After obtaining his degree, Spenser left Cambridge, and went on a visit to his kinsfolk in Lancashire. During this visit he supposedly met a woman of higher social status than his own and fell in love with her who figures as Rosalind in much of his future works.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
She disdained the poor poet which did not drive him to despair; rather it aroused him to make fresh efforts. He came to London following Harvey’s advice, and was taken as a member of the famous literary circle surrounding Sir Philip Sidney and his uncle, the Earl of Leicester. Sidney patronized Spenser, introduced him to Queen Elizabeth, and encouraged him in his imitation of the classical metres. In 1580 Spenser went to Ireland as secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton who had just been appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
In Ireland Spenser remained for eighteen years and served the British Government in more than one capacity. In the end his faithful services were rewarded with the grant of Kilcolman Castle, near Limerick, and an estate of three thousand acres. In Kilcolman, surrounded by great natural beauty he finished the first three books of The Faerie Queene.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
In 1589 Raleigh visited him, heard the poem with enthusiasm, hurried the poet off to London and presented him to Queen Elizabeth. The first three books were instantly successful on publication, and were acclaimed as the greatest work in the English language. A yearly pension of fifty pounds was granted him by the Queen. As the pension was rarely paid, the poet went back to Ireland.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
Soon after his return Spenser fell in love with a beautiful woman Elizabeth, an Irish girl. He wrote his Amoretti, a series of 88 sonnets in her honour, and afterwards represented her in The Faerie Queene as the beautiful woman dancing among the Graces. In 1594 he married Elizabeth celebrating his wedding with his Epithalamion. one of most beautiful wedding hymns in any language.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
Spenser next visited London in 1595, when he published Astrophel, an elegy on the death of his friend Sidney, and three more books of The Faerie Queene. He returned to Kilcolman. In 1598 he was appointed Sheriff of Cork. In this year Tyrone’s rebellion broke out. The castle Kilcolman was set on fire and Spenser barely escaped with his wife and two children. It is supposed that some unfinished parts of The Faerie Queene were burned to ashes in the fire.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
Spenser never recovered from the shock of this frightful experience. He returned to England broken-hearted, and in the following year (1599) he died in an inn at Westminster. There is a tradition that he was in extreme poverty at the end, even wanting bread. He was buried beside his master Chaucer in Westminster Abbey.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
[B] Spenser’s Works
(1) Minor poems: While Spenser’s fame rests mainly on The Faerie Queene, his minor poetry, which runs to several volumes, would itself have been sufficient to assure him the place of pre-eminence among contemporary English poets. His Shepherd’s Calendar consists of twelve books one for each month of the year. Spenser was no doubt making experiments in form and metre, examining his own abilities.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
The poems are unequal, but those for April and November are good. They take the form of discussions between shepherds and are therefore pastorals or eclogues, the best pastorals written in English up to that time. There are various subjects: praise of Queen Elizabeth, discussions about religion, the poet’s love for a certain mysterious Rosalind, treatment of sundry moral questions and so on. The style of the pastorals is deliberately arcnaic and in keeping with the rustic characters. The nation welcomed the book.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
His other minor poems are The Tears of the Muses (1591), Mother Husband’s Tale (1591), a satire on society. The Ruins of Time (1591), Astrophel, Amoretti, a series of 88 sonnets in Petrarchan manner, dealing with the progress of his love for Elizabeth Boyle whom he married in 1594. His marriage inspired his Epithalamion, by common consent, the noblest wedding hymn in the English language. His Colin Clout’s come home again contains some interesting personal details. In 1596 appeared his Four hymns and Prothalamion.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
*(2) The Faerie Queene: The Faerie Queene, Spenser’s masterpiece, is the epic of the English race at one of the great moments of its history. Spenser and his contemporaries regarded moral purpose as essential to the greatest art and with Spenser this purpose took the form of dealing with the old problem of the Renaissance-individual character in relation to the state. To carry out his purpose he planned the poem in twelve books, each book to deal with the adventures of a particular knight, who was to represent some virtue.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
Thus the first book deals with the Red Cross Kinght who represents Holiness; the second with Sir Guyon representing Temperance; the third with Britomart representing Chastity; the fourth with Cambel and Triamond representing Friendship; the sixth with Sir Calidore representing Courtesy. The chief of all the twelve knights is Prince Arthur who appears at the critical moments to rescue the oppressed and who in the end is to marry Gloriana, the Queen of Faery-land. Spenser completed only six books. We have also a fragment of the seventh treating of Constancy: The Faerie Queene is thus a grand allegory.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
As to the meaning of the allegorical figures one is generally in mind. In the first three books Faery Queen represents sometimes Queen Elizabeth, and sometimes the glory of God. Britomart is also Elizabeth. The Red Cross Knight is Sidney, the model of Englishman. Arthur is Leicester, Una is the Protestant Church while Duessa represents Mary Queen of Scots or Catholicism.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
The last three books bring out the wide range of contemporary characters and events. The poem reveals a sober, chaste and sensitive mind keenly alive to sensuous beauty but dead to the grossness and coarseness of some of his brilliant contemporaries. Beauty is for Spenser of the supermost value in life. Keats was fired by his verse, for certainly his famous phrase, “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever” is certainly Spenserian in sentiment.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
What differentiates Spenser from Shakespeare the poet is the calm that pervades his poems. “Sensitive to every phase of imagination and beauty, there is always a dreamy atmosphere about his verse. The greatness of Spenser’s poetry lies in the wonderful music of the verse, the beauty of the sound. Indeed too much sweetness of his poetry at once is more than the mind can bear. Spenser invented a special stanza for The Faerie Queene. This stanza is now known by his name and has often been used since. This is a nine-line stanza with the rhyme plan: ababbcbcc. The last line is an Alexandrine or a line of six iambic feet, the others have five iambic feet.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
[C] Spenser as a Sonneteer
Spenser ia a great Elizabethan sonneteer. His sonnet sequence Amoretti consists of 88 sonnets done in the Petrarchan manner. It describes the progress of Spenser’s love for Elizabeth Boyle, whom he married in 1594. She was his second wife and there was great disparity in age between the two. Naturally the fervour of love or passion or the unquiet that characterizes the sonnets of Sidney madly in love with another man’s wife (Lord Rich’s wife) or of Shakespeare whose mistress deceived him with his friend is absent in his sonnets.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
In default of an ardent passion Spenser’s sonnets have the charm of a harmonious and pure atmosphere; they are bathed in pure light. They show better than anything else the quality in Spenser which Coleridge names maidenliness, his love of the virginal in woman. His heroine is neither a goddess nor a saint, but a woman of flesh and blood, proud in her scorn for base and earthly things, humble in the knowledge of her defects. She thinks she cannot soar to heaven in rapid flight. She is privileged with no special knowledge of divine mysteries; she has to win heaven by her virtures-she thinks ‘how she to heaven may climb’.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
Spenser’s is the idealized courtly-love attitude which Petrarch manifests towards his love Laura. Like Petrarch Spenser conceived the lover to be a humble servant (i.e. the vassal) of the often cruel, fair lady, wounded by a glance of her eye, tempest-tossed in the seas of despair, when his love is not reciprocated, changing in mood according to the persence or absence of his beloved.
Spenser was not at all impervious to the physical beauty of his ladylove. In many of his sonnets he extols his mistress’s beauty with a wealth of sensual detail and colour:
“Fair bosom fraught with virtues richest tree
The nest of love, the lodging of delight.”
One of the supreme charms of Spenser’s sonnets is the synthesis of the exaltation of the body and the soul.
Like Sakespeare’s Spenser’s sonnets are both autobiographical and conventional literary exercises. Even though based on Petrarch Spenser’s sonnets have a charm of their own. As a sonneteer Spenser may have his rivals, but in respect of the beauty of the sound and the wonderful music of the verse, he remains unrivalled. The rhyme- scheme of the Spenserian sonnet is abab bebe cdcd ee.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
Modern criticism is not inclined to believe that all the Amoretti sonnets are not addressed to Elizabeth Boyle. But whether they are addressed to Lady Carey, or to a fictionalized and idealized female will ever remain a puzzle of all puzzles like the dark lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
[D] A Note on Petrarchan Sonnets
The sonnet originated in Italy in the thirteenth century. Most probably it was invented by Dante (1265-1321) who wrote a number of sonnets to his ladylove, Beatrice. But it was Petrarch (1304-74) who brought it to perfection by evolving a new pattern of his own.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
He made the sonnet an appropriate vehicle of human feelings. Like Dante Petrarch idealises love, but he brings love from Dante’s celestial plane to the earthly plane, and his sonnets vibrate with the warm and passionate heart-beats of the lover. Though love is unrequited in Petrarch his lover manifests the idealized courtly- love attitude towards his beloved. He conceives the lover to be the humble servant (vassal) of the often cruel, fair lady, wounded by a glance of her eye, tempest-tossed in the seas of despair when his love is not reciprocated.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
Petrarch’s sonnets are distinguished, as we have already seen, by warm intense passion, such as we find in the sonnet sequences of Sidney, Shakespeare, Spenser etc. Richard Garnett has rightly described them as “an epitomised encyclopaedia of passion.” In the Middle Ages man had to reprees his passion because it was considered a sin. So man mortified his flesh. With the Renaissance came in humanism which inculcated into men’s minds an intense love for beauty both celestial and earthly, pure and sensuous.
Everything connected with man and his physical and spiritual enjoyment was in consonance with the Renaissance spirit. As Petrarch was nurtured with the Renaissance humanism, his sonnets sing of the glory of human love, and exploit the whole gamut of human passions. At times the lover is perched on the height of rapture and at times is plunged into the sea of deep distress. Though love in Petrarch is human. it is never grossly physical. Love in Petrarch begins at the physical plane, but soon rises aloft from the physical to celestial plane.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
Petrarch did not invent the sonnet form which goes by his name. The Petrarchan form was used earlier by Dante and his circle, but Petrarch’s use of this form of sonnet made it widely known and it was much imitated, notably in France by Ronsard (1524- 85) and Du Bellay (1522-60). The Petrarchan sonnet is composed of an octave-an initial passage of eight lines rhyming ABBAABBA-followed by a sestet-six lines requiring only that each line has a rhyming mate.
In addition to the separation of octave from sestet by rhyme-scheme there is almost invariably a dramatic shift, a change of tone or point of view introduced by the sestet, and bringing to the poem a sort of ‘re- vision’ or revelation. A Petrarchan sonnet is like the flow of a wave returning. The octave is the flow, the sestet is the return. William Sharp says a Petrarchan sonnet is like a wind gathering in volume and dying away again immediately on attaining culminating force.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
[E] A Summary of the Sonnet
One day the poet wrote the name of her beloved (i.e. Elizabeth Boyle) on the sandy shore of a sea. But the waves rolled in and washed it off. Being least disappointed he wrote her name on the sea-shore a second time. But soon the tide rushed in to reduce the poet’s labour of writing the beloved’s name on the sea-beach to nought.
Seeing this futile effort of the poet to get her name preserved on the sandy shore the ladylove remarks that he tries, in vain, to immortalise a thing that is subject to death. For she will come to decay like the writing on the sea-shore, and her name will also be effaced from the memory of his near and dear ones. (Octave II. 1-8)
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
The poet dismisses his mistress’s observation as unacceptable, and even meaning- less, and observes that mean earthly things, being subject to decay, must turn to dust some day or other, but his ladylove will live a deathless life by being celebrated in his verse. The poet is convinced that his verse shall make her rare excellences eternal, and make her name shine on the firmament of heaven (i.e. eternity). As a result, while decay and death will subjugate all earthly objects, their love as eternised in his verse will defeat death and decay, and will be freshened and renewed as they will advance in years. Age cannot wither their love away.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
[F] A Critical Appreciation of the Sonnet
The sonnet beginning One day I wrote her name upon the strand is the Sonnet No. 75 in Spenser’s sonnet-sequence Amoretti published in 1591 and celebrating the progress of his love for his second wife Elizabeth Boyle. The poem is charged with the poet’s passionate love for his wife. He is at pains to immortalize her name and his love for her. In order to preserve her name on the elements (sandy sea-shore), he writes her name there.
When the waves roll in to wash away his beloved’s name on the sea-beach, he writes her name a second time, but this time too the pain he takes to preserve her name falls a prey to the onslaught of the sea-waves. He does not agree with his lover’s contention that it is futile to immortalize mortal things like herself, her name and the poet’s passionate devotion to her.
But the poet assures her that he will eternize her and his love for her by celebrating them in his verse. It is his verse which will subjugate death and decay rather than let them subjugate her and his love for her. Spenser’s idea of poetry triumphing over death and decay is similar to Shakespeare’s in his sonnets. In sonnet 18 (couplet) Shakespeare affirms the superiority of verse over death:
“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
Thus the poem One day I wrote her name upon the strand sings of the imortality of love as embodied in verse. It rings with sincerity of emotion, fervour of devotion to the ladylove, and above all, the keen desire to give her a glorious eternal life through verse.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
The sonnet One day I wrote her name upon the strand combines the conventional (traditional) elements of the Elizabethan (Petrarchan) sonneteering and individual qualities. Spenser’s over-all attitude to his ladylove is Petrarchan: she is not only beau- tiful, but also an embodiment of rare excellences; she is a perfect woman, as perfect as Petrarch’s ladylove conceived to be a goddess.
So the poet wishes to eternize her glorious qualities by his verse, which is in consonance with the poetic convention of the time. He surely equates her with a goddess, because he will “in the hevens wryte your glorious name.” The conventional element is also to be seen in the spirit of the poem. The transience of earthly things which was a common theme of the Elizabethan sonnet has had a conspicuous treatment here. Aware of the mortality of life, the lady laments,
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
“For I my selve shall lyke to this decay,
And eek my name bee wyped out lykewize.”
The grand conventional element that love is not subject to death or decay occurs in the concluding couplet,
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
“Where whenas death shall all the world subdew,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”
One day i wrote her name upon the strand departs, in some respects, from the sonneteering (i.e. Petrarchan) convention. It reveals the poet’s deep passion of love for Elizabeth Boyle minus the wailings and supplications of the conventional Petrarchan sonnet. The ladylove is no goddess she is aware of the mortality of life, and of the vanity of human efforts to eternize a mortal thing. Spenser’s ladylove is not cruel unlike the traditional love, nor does Spenser think himself his mistress’s vassal, nor is he sandwiched between hope and despair like Petrarch’s lover. He is confident of her love.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
The form of the sonnet One day I wrote her name upon the strand is Shakespearean, and not Petrarchan. It consists of three quatrains rhyming ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, and concluding with a rhymed couplet GG. There is the rhyme of the last line of each quatrain with the first line of the next quatrain, which contributes to music and melody.
The first quatrain introduces the theme-the poet’s efforts to preserve his beloved’s name against the onslaught of time and tide (i.e. death and decay).
The second quatrain develops the theme by the lady’s observation that every human effort to preserve a mortal thing like a lady’s name is bound to fail. There is a shift in the third quatrain with the poet’s affirmation that though baser things ‘die in dust’, the poet will confer immortality on his ladylove through his verse. The couplet provides a fitting cor.clusion of the arguments in the quatrains. It asserts that love triumphs over death which subjugates all things in the world.
ONE DAY I WROTE HER NAME
The sonnet is a perfect specimen of a lyric. It is characterized by sincerity and intensity of feeling stirred by his deep love for his second, young wife, and music and melody. The images are appropriate, vivid, and amply suggest the theme. The images of waves, tide, dust, prey, subdue suggest the transience of man’s life on earth and triumph of death and decay on earth. The image of heaven suggests iramortality. The images are, however, mostly conventional.
