| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | XXXIV. Compensation
Sonnet: ‘One day I wrote her name vpon the strand’ | | By Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599) |
| | | ONE day I wrote her name vpon the strand, | |
| But came the waues and washèd 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, | 5 |
| A mortall thing so to immortalize, | |
| For I my selue shall lyke to this decay, | |
| And eek my name bee wyped out lykewize. | |
| Not so, quod I, let baser things deuize | |
| To dy in dust, but you shall liue by fame: | 10 |
| My verse your vertues rare shall éternize, | |
| And in the heuens wryte your glorious name. | |
| Where whenas death shall all the world subdew, | |
| Our loue shall liue, and later life renew. | | | | |
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