- 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 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.