Amoretti : Sonnet 75

This poem is written in beginning modern English.
Edmund Spenser uses some dutch words in his poem, like strand (now: beach).

Here we have somebody who writes the name of the person he loves on the beach, because he wants the world to know he's in love. It's not clever because when the tide comes, the waves will wash it away.

In poetry they use metaphor.
An example : “you are like a red rose”, a red rose is a metaphor for beauty.

Line 1-2:
‘’One day I wrote her name upon the strand, but came the waves and washed it away.’’
The speaker and his love are at the beach (strand) and the speaker is in a romantic mood, because he writes her name in the sand. The waves wash the name away.
Line 3:
“Again I wrote it with a second hand,”
The speaker writes the name again. Second hand is the same as again. The line needs to be complete and he had already used “again”.
Line 4 :
“But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.”
Tides: the periodic variation in the surface level of oceans.
The tides are a metaphor for life and death, often used by poets, because it´s one of the cententies of life.
The tide is presented as a predator. His pains (efforts) are the prey of the waves.
Death is also a predator, the tides are life and death.
Line 5-6:
‘’Vain man, said she, that doest in vain assay, a mortel thing so to immortalize.’’
Vain has two meanings here,
Vain (man) = you think too highly of yourself.
Vain (assay) = useless (try).
It´s useless to try and make her live forever, to make her immortal, she’s telling him. That´s impossible.
In doing so he´s proving he´s vain, because he thinks he can do that and he pretends to be God.
God will make you live forever when you´re in heaven, only God can make you immortal.
Line 7:
“For I myself shall like to this decay.” = I, myself will have to die.
Decay means rot away, here it