Critical analysis of the poem, "One Day I Wrote Her Name".

"One Day I Wrote Her Name" by Edmund Spenser is a very special sonnet which is published in his collection of sonnets "Amoretti". It is special in  the sense that it does not talk about unfulfilled love, rather it is all about Spenser's love and courtship for his beloved Elizabeth Boyle. Though Shakespeare and Dante and Petrarch expressed their agony, melancholy, sorrow in their sonnets, Spenser expressed his genuine feeling for his lady- love. In that way, the sonnet is already different from the traditional sonnet. It creates a new vibe among the readers. It shows that you can also express your happiness and merry through the sonnets.

Now the matter is though Spenser differentiated from his predecessors in the theme, but he was following them in the matter of expressing platonic love. He was not talking about physical love. As the sonneteers wanted to immortalise their beloveds, Spenser also did so but in a new way. He said in the couplet that " Where whenas death shall all the world subdue / Our love shall live, and later life renew. The poet is quite optimistic here. He is not ready to accept that after their death, their love would be ended.

 In the very first quatrain we see that the poet was devastated as the waves of the sea again and again washed his beloved's name, but the poet was trying to write it again, and he finally realized that though in the sea-shore, it was washed off, but in reality everyone is going to remeber them thruogh his poem.

Spenser's each and every sonnet is unique for their simplicity, genuineness, and clarity. He mixed up the Renaissance love for beauty and the idealistic aspirations. His lady- love is quite more than a mere woman to him. She is the pure and glorious image of maker's beauty. The sincere and pure love of him towards his beloved is quite clear to the readers because of the clarity of rhythm and language. The poet here uses his own rhythm i.e. abab bcbc cdcd ee.  This is  also a proof of genuineness in his poetry.