Each sonnet is centrally concerned with how quickly time passes and how soon we humans die. Both sonnets use the metaphor of the waves to show how human lives are over almost in a flash. Spenser's speaker compares the speedy passage of time to writing his beloved's name in the sand, only to have the waves come along a few moments later and wipe it away. In the same manner, our lives will be quickly wiped away, his beloved tells him. Likewise, Shakespeare's speaker sees our lives passing as quickly as the waves crash upon the shore, only to be replaced by new waves (or people). Both writers mourn the lightning fast passage of time.

Spenser, however, wants his verses about his beloved to live on in heaven. He says his verses will "eternize" or make eternal her virtues. He will write her "glorious name" in the "heavens." He ends the sonnet by saying that after everything on earth has died, their love will live on in a heavenly sphere:

Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.