Spenser uses the idea of writing and a dialogue with his beloved to advance the theme of this sonnet.

As the sonnet opens, the speaker has been writing his beloved's name in the sand by the sea, but the waves come and wash her name away. At this point, a dialogue begins. The beloved tells the speaker it is wrong to try to immortalize her through writing her name because she is a mortal being who will decay and die. She is not immortal. The speaker responds, telling her she is wrong. The name he writes in the sand might go away, but he insists he will immortalize her in verse. The poems he writes, presumably such as the one we are reading, will guarantee that she will live on after death.

The dialogue is important, as it creates a sense of intimacy between the pragmatic woman speaker and the idealistic poet speaker who is determined to immortalize his beloved in words. The sonnet also develops by setting up an antithesis, or opposition, between the transitory writing in the sand that the speaker initially does and his immortal writing in verse