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.
In plain English
If I wrote down how beautiful you truly are, future readers won't believe me. Even now, my words can't capture half of who you are—they're like a tomb that hides your real life instead of showing it.
If I could actually describe your eyes and list all your gifts, people centuries from now would call me a liar. They'd say no human face was ever that perfect. My verses would turn yellow and old, dismissed like an elderly man who talks too much but lies constantly. Your actual worth would be written off as a poet's wild exaggeration.
But here's the answer: if you had a child, you'd dodge this problem. You'd live on twice—once in your offspring, and once in my poems.
