Shakespearian Sonnet XVII: Meaning and Translation.?

Question

I want to know what this poem is saying, and what it would look like in translated.

XVII.

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 yellow'd 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.

Answer 1

As a person above said, this poem is in English. But this is a loose, "contemporary" version:

In the future, who would believe what I wrote if I only talked about how great you are?

Actually, my writing barely expresses how fantastic I find you.

If I could truly explain your beautiful eyes and your many charms, people in the future would think I'm lying, because only angels can be so wonderful.

My poems will get old and faded, and people will think that I exaggerated in my passion or used old cliches to talk about you.

But if you had a child alive at the time, you would live on in his or her greatness, and in the words of my poem.

Basically, the speaker is saying that his beloved is so fantastic, no one is going to believe that the things he's written are true. But maybe, many years from now, the beloved will have a child just as fantastic, giving truth to the poet's praise.

Answer 2

Translated? Into which language?

Are you for real? This is English, and not that difficult to understand.

The essence of the sonnet is to say that it's all very well for the poet's loved one to be celebrated and immortalised in one of his poems, but this process has its drawbacks. Firstly, the poem will be as a tomb, in that it will act as a stylised and incomplete memorial to the loved one: "hides your life and shows not half your parts". Secondly, there is the risk that nobody will believe the flattering portrait.

The perfect solution, according to the poet, would be to produce offspring, as living proof of the existence, and beauty, of the love object. She would then "live twice".