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Rh

O! how I faint when I of you do write, Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, And in the praise thereof spends all his might, To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame! But since your worth—wide as the ocean is,— The humble as the proudest sail doth bear, My saucy bark, inferior far to his, On your broad main doth wilfully appear. Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat, Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride; Or, being wrack'd, I am a worthless boat, He of tall building, and of goodly pride: Then if he thrive and I be cast away, The worst was this,—my love was my decay.

Or I shall live your epitaph to make, Or you survive when I in earth am rotten. From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immortal life shall have, Though I, once gone, to all the world must die. The earth can yield me but a common grave, When you entombéd in men's eyes shall lie. Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall o'erread, And tongues to be your being shall rehearse When all the breathers of this world are dead. You still shall live—such virtue hath my pen— Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.