It's Sonnet Day! Today we read Sonnet 75 of Edmund Spenser's Amoretti, from back before English was spelled properly (1595). Paws off, ladies; he wrote it for his second wife, the unfortunately homonymed Elizabeth Boyle.

One day I wrote her name upon the strand
But came the waves and washèd it away:
Agayne I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray.
"Vayne man," said she, "that doest in vaine assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize,
For I my selve shall lyke to this decay,
And eek my name bee wypèd out lykewize."
"Not so," quod I, "let baser things devize
To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens wryte your glorious name.
Where whenas death shall all the world subdew,
Our love shall live, and later life renew."