Sonnet 17

Who will believe my verse in time to come

If it were fill’d with your most high deserts?

Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb

Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes

And in fresh numbers number all your graces,

The age to come would say, ‘This poet lies:

Such heavenly touches ne’er touch’d earthly faces.’

So should my papers, yellow’d with their age,

Be scorn’d like old men of less truth than tongue,

And your true rights be term’d a poet’s rage

And stretchèd metre of an antique song.

But were some child of yours alive that time,

You should live twice: in it, and in my rhyme.

Who will believe these poems in the times ahead,

Even if I fill them to the brim with praise of you?

Heaven knows, you’re only dead

In these lines, mere words, however true.

If I could sing the beauty of your eyes

Or put to music all of your graces,

They’d still say it was only the lies

Of a poet enamored of pretty faces.

These papers, lost in libraries,

Fragile in their age,

Would inspire calumnies,

Like fools who think themselves sage.

But if some great work of yours were alive,

Then how could they claim my poems deceive?