If thou survive my well-contented day,
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,
Compare them with the bett’ring of the time,
And though they be outstripp’d by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
O! then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:
‘Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age,
A dearer birth than this his love had brought,
To march in ranks of better equipage:
But since he died and poets better prove,
Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love’.
In plain English
If you outlive me, you may someday come across these rough poems I've written for you. When you do, compare them to the better verse that other poets are writing in your time. They'll almost certainly be worse—outshone by cleverer, more skilled writers.
When that happens, I'm asking one thing: keep them anyway, but not because they're good poetry. Keep them for me, because they come from love. Think of it this way: if I'd kept growing as a poet the way the world has grown, I might have written something worthier of you. But I didn't, and now better poets exist.
So judge their work by its brilliance. Judge mine by what it meant.
