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 tombWhich hides your life and shows not half your parts.If I could write the beauty of your eyesAnd 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 ageBe scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue,And your true rights be term'd a poet's rageAnd stretched metre of an antique song: But were some child of yours alive that time, You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme.
These poems are a devious sort,because the good looks they exhortwill seem misconstructionswithout reproductions—a hot kid's a perfect retort.