What’s Up With the Title?

This poem is the seventy-fifth in Spenser's sonnet sequence Amoretti, so we call it "Sonnet 75" (no big surprises there). The sequence is a poeticized version of Spenser's successful courtship of Elizabeth Boyle. There were 89 sonnets in total in the sonnet sequence, and this one occurs towards the end. The hard work of courtship has already been done by "Sonnet 75;" now that the speaker and Elizabeth are already in love, it's time for the even bigger promises to begin—like immortality through art.