The author incorporates various poetic elements, such as symbols, the woman’s name and heaven, external conflicts, and alliteration, to express deeply personal thoughts, emotions, and convictions. In this poem, the author employs quatrains and concludes with a couplet. The initial stanza consists of a quatrain with an ABAB rhyme scheme. As the author and his companion stroll along the beach, he endeavors to inscribe her name on the sand, but the relentless waves repeatedly wash it away. This act of writing her name symbolizes his love for her and serves as the catalyst for this sonnet. The author utilizes imagery to convey his profound affection for his spouse, yet the incessant waves seem to mock him and inflict suffering.
The initial conflict depicted in the poem is symbolized by the images of beach waves crashing and erasing the writer’s name in the sand. The poet finds himself at odds with the relentless waves that continuously wash away his creation, akin to a predator hunting its prey. In this scenario, his prey represents the love he harbors for his wife. The second stanza adopts a quatrain structure with a rhyme scheme of BCBC. At this point, the speaker’s wife interjects, labeling him as a “vain man” and admonishing him to cease his futile endeavors.
According to his wife, mortals often try to immortalize things that no longer exist, calling it a “mortal thing” and trying to make it everlasting. She believes that these attempts are useless because time is relentless and no mortal can truly be immortalized. In the same stanza, his wife compares herself to these futile efforts by using the simile “like”. She states that she too will eventually fade away, just as her name was washed away by the tide.
The third stanza presents a quatrain with the rhyme scheme CDCD. It signifies a pivotal moment in the poem where the author expresses that his wife will be forever memorialized in his poetry and verse. This stanza serves as the second conflict between the two lovers depicted in this poem. Once the conversation commences, the woman asserts that love, being a mortal concept, cannot be made immortal, thus mocking the speaker’s efforts as vain. Conversely, the speaker firmly believes in the possibility of immortalizing his love for her and vows to accomplish this feat.
He believes that while everything else should perish, she should be able to exist eternally. He has found a method to demonstrate his everlasting affection for her, stating that he will preserve his love for her in his writings forever. Additionally, he promises her that if death were to take place, he would immortalize her name in heaven. Hence, her name would transition from the mortal realm of earth to the eternal realm of heaven.
The speaker of the poem has successfully resolved the conflicts he faced with his woman and his inability to make the writing in the sand permanent. He has discovered a method to demonstrate his eternal love for his woman. The final couplet, “Where whenas Death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew,” captures the essence of the poem by contrasting the everlasting nature of love and death with the shortness of life and humanity. However, true love will endure forever.
