Who will believe my verse in time to come
If it were filled with your most high deserts?
Though yet it is but as a tomb which hides your life
And shows not half your parts (Sonnet 17)
If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in my verses number all your grace
The age to come would say ‘This poet lies:
Such beauty never touched an earthly face (Sonnet 17)

I’m eternally yours, eternally yours
Dying with my time, forever in my song
Eternally yours…

So if 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
In the stretched metre of an antique song (Sonnet 17), oh…
But were some child of yours alive that time
You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme (Sonnet 17)
A woman’s face by nature’s own hand drawn
The master-mistress of my fervidness (Sonnet 20)

I’m eternally yours, eternally yours
Dying with my time, forever in my song
Eternally yours…

As an unperfect actor on the stage
Or some fierce beast replete with too much rage
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love’s rite (Sonnet 23), oh…
Looking at darkness as blind people do
Only my soul’s imaginary sight
Presents your shadow to my sightless view
Just like a jewel hung in blackest night (Sonnet 27)

I’m eternally yours, eternally yours…

My mirror won’t persuade me I am old
As long as youth and you are of one date
But when in you time’s furrows I behold
Then it is time to anticipate death (Sonnet 22)
For all that beauty that does cover you
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart
Which in your breast does live, as yours in me
How can I then be older than you are? (Sonnet 22)

I’m eternally yours, eternally yours
Dying with my time, forever in my song!