One day I wrote her name upon the strand

"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 dost in vain assay,

A mortal thing so to immortalise;

For I myself shall like to this decay,

And eke my name be wiped out likewise."

"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 whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew."" (Edmund Spenser)

Spenser's sonnet is a meditation on the ephemerality of existence and, at the same time, on the eternal endurance of love. He writes "her" name on the strand, hoping to make last his love, but his attempt is washed away. He makes another attempt, the word "again" emphasising the repetitious act, but is thwarted, again. 

One feels that Spenser is trying to come to terms with the passage of time and the eventual erasure of his most cherished feelings and moments. In a resonant way, his attempts at eternalising his love seem vain and represent the struggles we all, most likely, go through during periods in our lives. There is a certain desperation and pain in his repetitious attempts, with the illimitable sea of time his seeming enemy.

But from the sonnet emerges the realisation that, though death can subdue the world, and on one level everything fades, love will fundamentally continue, and will be the force that eternally renews life and it's transformations. In the sonnet there is thus a profound marriage between the transformational nature of existence and the eternal force, that we all embody and experience, that renews such transformation.

"Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew"

I also admire the way that love isn't clearly defined in this sonnet. It points strongly to romantic love, but also indicates a deeper kind of love, as a universal force, thus suggesting an inclusive conception of the word.