O could I, should I, would I write of you
for Shakespeare wrote of his with gentlest skill,
but could this sonnet plain your looks make true
while others laugh at me and mock me ill.
For sometimes I do think they could be right
as I toil alone in this thankless task
yet when I think of you in my mind's sight
'tis like the sun peeping o'er his white mask.
Then, then your beauty shines all o'er my page
and dries my ink and stamps your beauty down
to dazzle readers of a future Age
in faded ink and faded paper brown.
For if in time to come these lines are read
your beauty shall live on while we lie dead.