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Home  »  The Oxford Shakespeare  »  Sonnet LXXXI

William Shakespeare (1564–1616). The Oxford Shakespeare: Poems. 1914.

“Or I shall live your epitaph to make”

Sonnet LXXXI

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,          5
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:  
The earth can yield me but a common grave,  
When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.  
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,  
Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read;   10
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.