1 Who will believe my verse in time to come
2 If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
3 Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
4 Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.
5 If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
6 And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
7 The age to come would say, "This poet lies,
8 Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces."
9 So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
10 Be scorn'd, like old men of less truth than tongue,
11 And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage,
12 And stretched metre of an antique song:
13 But were some child of yours alive that time,
14 You should live twice, in it and in my rhyme.
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