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.

Sonnet 17 explained:

The haunting beauty of these verses captures the timeless struggle of a poet, seeking to immortalise a love so profound that doubts linger about its recognition in the centuries to come. The poet acknowledges the inadequacy of words to convey the full splendour of the subject’s virtues and fears that the true essence of this love may be lost to the ages.

As the poet despairs at the ephemeral nature of the written word and the enduring legacy of the beloved, there’s a powerful longing for a future where the authenticity of their love can be preserved for all time.

These poignant lines eloquently express the poet’s deep sorrow at the prospect of his work being disregarded and misunderstood, and yet, there’s a glimmer of hope in the idea that if the beloved’s child were to live in the future, the essence of the love would live on, both in the child and in the poet’s verses.

This profound and introspective meditation on love, immortality, and the passage of time invites readers to ponder the enduring power of art and the possibility of transcending mortality through the written word.

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