Sonnet Analysis: Spenser I

For all that my sonnet analyses have primarily come from my own work or the nineteenth century, the modern period and even the eighteenth-nineteenth century sonnet revival are merely reflections of the first major period of sonnet writing in English, the Renaissance, and particularly the sixteenth century. Therefore it is high time I analyze poetry from that period, and not just Shakespeare either (Shakespeare's sonnets were actually relatively late to the game). So for that reason I present a sonnet by Edmund Spenser, from his famous sequence "Amoretti."

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 eek my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues 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.

Triumphs:
The rhythms of this sonnet are admirably prepared. I would be tempted to say they ebb and flow like the tide mentioned in the sonnet, but that's probably a stretch. Suffice to say they are extremely regular, pleasingly so, and the end-stopping contributes significantly to the effect. The speech within the sonnet is well-integrated, without confusion or disruption of the meter. The conceit is also, in my humble opinion, a pretty one, particularly the way it subtly draws a distinction between the fame of a name and the fame of the verse. And I happen to love the two lines "One day I wrote her name upon the strand,/But came the waves and washed it away:" because I have a soft spot for lines that seem like they could actually have been said (remembering this is slightly archaic due to the time of composition, not due to intentional archaism).

Imperfections:
Despite what I have said about the conceit, it's a little strange that it is her name that disappears in the sand, and therefore which implicitly is a "baser thing" which will "die in dust" (although of course given the anonymity of the "her", one could argue that this is simply accurate). The final couplet is also slightly confusing: how exactly will the poem bring them back to life, as implied by the final word "renew"? Far be it from me to suggest commonplaces are superior to invention, but the commonplace (as alluded to in Spenser's "eternize") of the time was that poetry could provide perpetual life, not resurrection. It may be that I am reading too much into Spenser's line, but the implication seems to be that the "love shall live" on despite death and that will somehow "later life renew." I also find the contrast of the literal writing of the name in the sand, the literal writing of the poem, and the figurative writing in the heavens a little strange, as the third term seems to unnecessarily complicate the first two. But still, I find very little wrong with this sonnet, particularly on a technical level; my only quibbles are with the ways in which the conceit is worked out - as is indeed typical of my quibbles with Spenser.