Poetry "Poetry is the human soul entire,  squeezed like a lemon or a lime, drop by drop, into atomic words.“ --Langston Hughes

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) Sonnet 75 “One day I wrote a name…”

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, "that doest in vain assay A mortal thing so to immortalize,

and eek my name bee wiped out likewise." For I my self shall like to this decay,

"Not so," quod I, "let baser things devise, To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your virtues rare shall eternise,

And in the heavens write your glorious name.

Where, when death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.

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