Shakespeare's Sonnets Navigator Summary of Sonnet 17 in the Table of Contents Notes for Sonnet 17

Shakespeare's Sonnet 17


  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.
Recommended: Reading by BretWheadon

"my papers (yellowed with their age)"

Image source: Early Modern Literary Studies

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