Theme:      Eulogy to Patron
Content:    You will live for evermore through my verse. Even when I've died and can not serve you directly any more, I will still be doing so indirectly by the strength of the verse I have written of you. Evidently inspired by Horace's Odes 3.30 as detailed below.

• "If I survive you then I will write your epitaph; if you survive me then I'll be no more than dead in my grave."
• 1st. mid-line eye-rhyme of live and survive.

• "Your memory will survive you, but, being dead, each memory I have of you will perish."
• 2nd. mid-line eye-rhyme of memory and me.
• The author seems to be implying that the subject's name can never be taken, removed, from the word hence. The subject is likely to be Henry Wriothesley so an apparent echo of the subject's name is present in the word that the poet is specifically saying his memory cannot be removed from.
• Probable pun on the author's name in will.

• "Your name will live on forever, whilst I will be gone."
• More explicitly now, the poet states that the subject's name can be found in the word hence: the subject will be immortalised in this verse via the word hence that appears 6 times in sonnets 1-126 to the young man, and twice in this sonnet, but nowhere in the 28 in the dark lady series. Perhaps a pet name for Henry Wriothesley this does appear to repeatedly confirm that the subject's name is Henry as it is implied here and in other sonnets.
• 3rd. mid-line rhyme of hence and once.
• His subject appears to be someone already very well known. There's no connection yet with the author or his verse being atall responsible for memorialising his subject's worth.

• "My destiny is a common grave whilst you will always be remembered."
• 4th. mid-line eye-rhyme of me and men's.
• Pre-occupation in the first 2 quatrains with death.

• "My verse will be your monument, both now and for generations to come."
• Shakespeare is talking about us here. How humbling and flattering.
• Joint immortality of both the subject and author achieved via the verse: Your monument and my verse.
• Even if the author dies first and doesn't write his subject's epitaph, he will still have one by way of the verse that has already been written.

• "Your name will be recited in this verse by future generations."
• An uplift of tone and sentiment in the 3rd. quatrain in looking to the future and introducing life-giving breath that rhymes with the sentiment of death in the first 2 quatrains.
• Breathers is virtually an anagram of "rehearse": those who will recite the verse will be "rehearsing" it as they "breath".

• "You will live on in my verse as long as mankind breathes as well as in the spoken words of admiring men."
• The subject will live on, both in the verse as written, and as spoken.
• Joint immortality of both the subject and author again achieved via the verse: You and my.
• Heavy emphasis on life-giving breath in the closing couplet: positive, perpetual, eternal.