On Spenser's Amoretti 75

Somebody’s name is written on the sand,
precisely to be erased by the tide.
The message is wiped by a second hand.
That is the purpose of being inscribed,

before the face of such infinity,
so that being remembereed for a time,
the name evokes an intimacy,
brief as any creature in the slime.

All writing is written to be erased.
All loving is loved for self-forgetting,
so that if the lover totally raze
themselves, the beloved is not one met

with in the surf, called out to, not a name
in sand, but oblivion shared the same.

Woodford Halse - 5 April 2023

I have been fascinated by Spenser’s poem since I was 13.

Amoretti was published in 1595 as a sonnet cycle in courtship of Elizabeth Boyle. I have discussed other poems from that collection with respect to Edmund Rubbra’s music.