17

 Who would take well my verse in time to come,
 If it were filled with what should come to you?
 Though yet, God knows, it is but as a tomb
 Which hides your life and shows not half of you.
 If I could write the charm that's in your eyes
 And in fresh lines line up all of your grace,
 The age to come would say, "The young man lies:
 That touch of God has not touched on man's face."
 So should my page turned brown with all its age
 Be scorned like old men of less truth than tongue,
 And your true rights be termed a verse hack's rage
 And a stretched line of some old, long gone song:
   But if some child of yours lives in that time,
   You would live twice -- in it and in my rhyme.

                                -- Will the Bard

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