Sonnet 32
If thou survive my well-contented day,
poetry
mortality
love
legacy
If thou survive my well-contented day,
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover,
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,
Compare them with the bettering of the time,
And though they be outstripp'd by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
O, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:
'Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age,
A dearer birth than this his love had brought,
To march in ranks of better equipage:
But since he died and poets better prove,
Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love.'
What It Means
Shakespeare imagines his own death and asks the young man to keep these poems afterward. Even if better poets come along, he asks him to say: these verses were written by someone who loved you, even if the craft is inferior. Don't read them for the poetry — read them for the love. It's a disarming piece of self-deprecation: Shakespeare presents himself as a mediocre craftsman with extraordinary feelings.
Context
Part of the Fair Youth sequence. The self-deprecating pose is partly genuine modesty and partly rhetorical — he claims inferiority knowing the poems will prove him wrong.
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