Saturday Rave: One day I wrote her name by Edmund Spenser

 It's August, and I want to be by the seaside.

That's not possible for me at the moment, but here's a poem that combines the shore with a very Elizabethan sentiment in a very Elizabethan sonnet, Amoretti LXXV by Edmund Spencer:

Here he is, looking rather self-conscious:

Spencer was an interesting character. He was born humbly, worked his way through college, got himself a job as secretary to a bishop, gave that up to join the English army which was at the time seeking to pacify Ireland (pacify being a considerable euphemism, I'm afraid), became close friends with Walter Raleigh, put himself in the way of some valuable land, put himself in the way of some more land, and then put himself in the way of Elizabeth, the young daughter of the Earl of Cork, to whom he dedicated a series of love sonnets, of which this is number seventy five:

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."

In 1598 Spencer's castle in Ireland was burned down by some unsurprisingly annoyed Irish, and Spencer moved back to London where he died, aged forty-six, according to the unreliable Ben Johnson for want of bread.

Spencer was right about his poems living on. His wife Elizabeth lived on, too, and married twice more, probably to better men, though not nearly such good poets.

Word To Use Today: virtue. Ironically in the circumstances, the word virtue comes from the Latin virtūs, which means manliness or courage, from vir, man.

Ha!