Shakespeare's Sonnets: Who will believe my verse in time to come

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Who will believe my verse in time to comeIf it were fill'd with your most high deserts?Though yet heav'n knows it is but as a tombWhich hides your life and shews 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 heav'nly touches ne'er touch't earthly faces."So should my papers (yellowed 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 stretchèd metre of an antique song. But were some child of yours alive that time, You should live twice, in it and in my rhyme.

© William Shakespeare