Homework Help: Spenser's Amoretti Sonnet #75 Question

Posted by Allyson on Thursday, January 10, 2013 at 8:54am.

Here's the sonnet:
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.
5 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
10 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.

Question; the speaker in this sonnet is mocked by the ocean for trying to do what? What is the speakers final conclusion on the situation?

Thanks for helping, if you can :P

Spenser's Amoretti Sonnet #75 Question - Writeacher, Thursday, January 10, 2013 at 8:58am
1 -- what happens in lines 2 and 4?

2 -- what is he saying in the last 4 lines?
Spenser's Amoretti Sonnet #75 Question - Allyson, Thursday, January 10, 2013 at 9:03am
In lines 2 and 4, the waves washed his Beloved's name away, and he's obviously in love with this girl, so he thinks that love triumphs over death. And the tyde charges him with vanity.

In the last four lines, he's saying that our love shall forever live on, and later in live renew it's self, love triumphs over death.

Right?
Spenser's Amoretti Sonnet #75 Question - Writeacher, Thursday, January 10, 2013 at 9:08am
She is the one who calls him vain. The ocean simply lets him know that nothing lasts in the sand.

Also, that his poem will memorialize her forever. His poem isn't written in sand!

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