| 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 | 5 |
| 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, | 10 |
| And your true rights be term’d a poet’s rage | |
| And stretched metre of an antique song: | |
| But were some child of yours alive that time, | |
| You should live twice,—in it and in my rime. |