“One day I wrote her name……made my pains his prey.”
[EXPLANATION]
One day the poet wrote the name of his beloved upon the sandy shore. But then the waves came and wiped the name away. Again the poet wrote the name a second time but the tide (high waves) came and wiped it again. The poet’s attempts to write his beloved’s name are being preyed upon by the waves.
“Vayne man,” said she……a mortal thing so to immortalize.”
[EXPLANATION]
“Vayne man” has been attributed to Spenser (the poet) by his beloved Elizabeth Boyle in a teasing manner. She said to him that all his attempts of writing her name on the beach always resulted in waste of his time. She states that the poor poet was stubborn because he was trying to immortalize a mortal creature. She herself would decay one day, leaving this world, and her name would also be wiped out like the name on the sand.
“Not so,” (quod I) “let baser things devise…. write your glorious name.”
[EXPLANATION]
“No,” replied the lover and stated that let inferior materials be reduced to dust but you will live by fame. The poet wants to immortalize her by writing in his poems about the rare qualities which the beloved possessed. He will write her glorious name in the heavens with his verse.
He would write her name in the firmament, far above the reach of man and dusty earth.
“Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”
[EXPLANATION]
When death will conquer all the world and all worldly things and living beings will be destroyed, their love will remain safe and alive in the distant future. This love will give new life and freshness to their afterlife, a new world that will come after them.