Poème du jour : "Sonnet LXXV : One Day I Wrote her Name", par Edmund Spenser

Allégorie. Les funérailles de l'Amour, 1550-1575

Antoine Caron

Sonnet LXXV: One Day I Wrote her Name

Edmund Spenser

Amoretti, 1595

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 prey.

Vayne man! sayd she, that doest in vaine assay

A mortall thing so to immortalize;

For I my selfe shall like to this decay.

And eek my name bee wyped out lykewise.

Not so (quod I); let baser things devize

To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame :

My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,

And in the heavens wryte your glorious name;

   Where, when as death shall all the world subdew,

   Our love shall live, and later life renew.