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