Sonnet 81
on this difficult day:
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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,
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;
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.
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The main volta
would be the such in the penultimate
line (but there are several minor turns all over the poem) (which I have no
time to list in detail today). More
tomorrow—
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