Back to literature.

Here is one of Shakespeare’s sonnets:

Who will believe my verse in time to come,

If it were filled 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 never touched earthly faces.’

So should my papers, yellowed with their age,

Be scorned like old men of less truth than tongue;

And your true rights be termed a poet’s rage

And stretched metre of an antique song.

But were some child of yours alive at that time

You should live twice – in it, and in my rhyme.