Sonnet 17
Who will beleeve my verse in time to come
If it were fild with your most high deserts?
Though yet heav'n knowes it is but as a tombe
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 nere toucht earthly faces."
So should my papers (yellow'd with their age)
Be scorn'd, like old men of lesse truth than tongue,
And your true rights be termd a Poets rage,
And stretched miter of an Antique song.
But were some childe of yours alive that time,
You should live twise in it, and in my rime.
Commentary
Address to a fair young man encouraging him to procreate
Changes to the original text: line 3, heaven changed to heav'n; lines 7 and 8, speech marks inserted;line 9, yellowed changed to yellow'd.
In the first quatrain, the poet asks who in the future would believe him were he to describe all the young man's beauties, though his verse cannot adequately represent the living beauties of the young man.
In the second quatrain, the poet continues this idea, asserting that if he were to adequately describe the young man's beauties, people would say that he lied. 'Numbers' are verses.
In the third quatrain, the poet pursues the supposition further. 'Stretched miter' is stretched meter, ie exaggerated verses.
The final couplet makes the point that, in a child, the young man would live twice, once in his child and once in the poet's verses.