We can die by it, if not live by love,

And if unfit for tombs or hearse

Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;

And, if no piece of chronicle we prove,

We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms;

As well a well-wrought urn becomes

The greatest ashes as half-acre tombs,

And by these hymns all shall approve

Us canoniz’d by love:

And thus invoke us: “You whom reverend love