Sonnet 17

1 Who will believe my verse in time to come
2 If it were filled with your most high deserts?
3 Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
4 Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts:
5 If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
6 And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
7 The age to come would say this poet lies,
8 Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.
9 So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
10 Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
11 And your true rights be termed a poet’s rage,
12 And stretched metre of an antique song.
13 But were some child of yours alive that time,
14 You should live twice,—in it, and in my rhyme.