Text 22

* * *

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, 'thou do'st 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.'

* * *

My true love hath my heart, and I have his,

By just exchange, one for the other given.

I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss:

There never was a better bargain driven.

His heart in me, keeps me and him in one,

My heart in him, his thoughts and senses guides:

He loves my heart, for once it was his own:

I cherish his, because in me it bides.

His heart his wound received from my sight:

My heart was wounded with his wounded heart,

For as from me, on him his hurt did light,

So still methought in me his hurt did smart:

Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss:

My true love hath his heart and I have his.

If you come to think about it, Spenser's sonnet is a striking example of the Renaissance spirit. It contains every value that those gentlemen held dear – love for a mortal woman, and love of immortal poetry. The scene is also of importance: you immediately remember the famous adage – time and tide wait for no man – and the message is intensified. Sydney's sonnet contains another gentlemanly feature of those days: placing bigger importance on firm friendship between men rather than on volatile love between men and women. This particular characteristic became even more manifest in Shakespaere's work. In his Sonnets we come across it very often.