“One Day I Wrote Her Name” Menegazzo - Virardi

One Day I Wrote Her Name One day I wrote her name upon the strand A But came the waves and washed it away: B Again I wrote it with a second hand, A But came the tide and made my pains his prey. B "Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain essay C A mortal thing so to immortalize; D For I myself shall like to this decay, C And eke my name be wiped out likewise.“ D "Not so," quoth I; "let baser things devise E To lie in dust, but you shall live by fame; F My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, E And in the heavens write you glorious name: F Where, whenas Death shall all the world subdue, G Our love shall live, and later life renew.“ G

Rhyme Scheme The rhyme scheme follows the usual pattern of Elizabethan sonnet as a matter of fact the rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg

“One Day I Wrote Her Name” is composed by an octave and a sestet. Metrical Structure “One Day I Wrote Her Name” is composed by an octave and a sestet. In the octave the poet explains his feelings and talks about destructive properties of time . In the sestet poet would find a solution, he is hopeful that his verses will be able to eternize the memory of the beauty of the beloved and transfigure her into a heavenly being.

The contrast between Time and Poetry The principal themes mentioned in the sonnet are: The expressions that indicate the inevitability of time and also indicate the power of poetry to give eternal life Time - Destroys feelings Poetry (love) - Will eternize feelings immortalize, eternize, again , mortal , decay, fame , heaven.

The use of words In the first quatrain the poet created a very realistic image of what he feels; Spenser begins the sonnet with a symbolic act on the part of a lover. “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” The poet highlights this act with the repetition of certain words like the verbs “ wrote” and “ came” and adjectives like “one day” and “ again”

Etymological Figures There are some etymological figures in Spenser’s sonnet They consist of the repetition of some words that are not indentical but they convey the same effect. At line 5 : "Vain man that dost in vain essay At line 6: A mortal thing so to immortalize; At line 14: Our love shall live, and later life renew."

Time and poetry Readers might normally expect a contraddiction between lover/lady but this sonnet is characterised by the contraddiction between time and poetry (love). This makes the poem of universal value.

The central contrast in the sonnet is expressed as Life vs Death The central contrast in the sonnet is expressed as Life/Death “A mortal thing so to immortalize; For I myself shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wiped out likewise” These are the words of the woman that wants the man understand that everything is mortal and so it is not possible to write the name on the sand because it will disappear, as everything in the world.

“And in the heavens write you glorious name” Forever or never “One day I wrote her name upon the strand /But came the waves and washed it away” Write the name on the sand shows the wish to transform something mortal into something immortal. Because when the waves cames, the name will disappear. “And in the heavens write you glorious name” The poet wants to write the lady’s name in the heavens because he wants to make his love eternal and with his verse he want to eternize the virtue of his beloved. So this is something eternal, that remains forever.

Universe According to the Renaissance cosmology the universe was made of four elements. In this text we could find three. WATER—> things that decay EART —> things that recur AIR —> higher, more refined things