I love medieval literature almost as much as RandomLogic loves Disney (okay, I love Disney too). Edmund Spenser, best known for "The Faerie Queene" (also an awesome book of poetry), also wrote "The Amoretti" to celebrate the courtship of his second wife. My favorite is Sonnet 75.

This is for all the romantics, and for those that believe that love lasts.

Sonnet 75

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
"Vain man," said she, "that doest in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize,
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wiped out likewise."
"Not so" (quoth I), "let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name.
Where whenas Death shall all the world subdue,
Out love shall live, and later life renew."