Sonnet 17

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The first two lines of Sonnet 17 in the 1609 Quarto
Q1 Q2 Q3 C 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, yellowed 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. 4 8 12 14 —William Shakespeare

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Q2



Q3



C

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, yellowed 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.

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12

14

Sonnet 17 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is the final poem of what are referred to by scholars as the procreation sonnets (Sonnets 1-17) with which the Fair Youth sequence opens.

Sonnet 17 questions the poet's descriptions of the sequence's young man, believing that future generations will see these descriptions as exaggerations, if the youth does not make a copy of himself by fathering a child. As in Sonnet 130, Shakespeare shows himself to be hesitant about self-assured, flamboyant, and flowery proclamations of beauty.

Sonnet 17 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, consisting of three quatrains followed by a couplet. It follows the form's typical rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. Sonnet 17 is written in iambic pentameter, a form of meter based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The sonnet's fourth line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

The sixth line exhibits two fairly common variations, a final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending, and the rightward movement of the first ictus (the resulting four-position figure, × × / /, is sometimes referred to as a minor ionic):