"My glass shall not persuade me I am old, As long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee time's furrow I behold, Then look, I death my days would expirate For all that beauty that doth cover thee Is but the steady raiment of my heart. Which in my breast doth live, as thine in me. How can I then be older than thou art? O, therefore, love, be of thyself so wary As I, not for myself, but for thee will; Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary As tender nurse her babe from faring ill. Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain; Thou gavest me thine, not to give back again." But nearly every Sonnet might be quoted in support of this view. Especially is it of value in bringing an intelligent and allowable explanation to Sonnets 40, 41, and 42, which now no longer have an unsavoury flavour. Sonnet No. 59 is most noteworthy, because it implies a belief in re-incarnation. Shakespeare expresses his longing to know what the ancients would have said of his marvellous intellect. If he could find his picture in some antique book over 500 years old, see an image of himself as he then was, and learn what men thought of him! "If their bee nothing new, but that which is Hath beene before, how are our braines begulld, Which laboring for invention, beare amisse The second burthen of a former child? Oh that record could with a back-ward looke, Even of five hundredth courses of the Sunne, Show me your image in some antique booke, Since minde at first in carrecter was done, That I might see what the old world could say To this composed wonder of your frame; Whether we are mended, or where better they, Or whether revolution be the same. Oh sure I am, the wits of former daies, To subjects worse have given admiring praise." There is the same idea in Sonnet 71, which suggests that in some future re-incarnation Bacon might read Shakespeare's praises of him. Conjectures as to who was the rival poet may be dispensed with. The following rendering of Sonnet No. 80 makes this perfectly clear:-- "O how I (_the poet_) faint when I of you (_F.B._) do write, Knowing a better spirit (_that of the philosopher_) doth use your name And in the praise thereof spends all his might To make me tongue tied, speaking of your fame! (_Shakespeare never refers to Bacon or vice-versa_) But since your (_F.B.'s_) worth wide as the ocean is, The humble as the proudest sail doth bear, My saucy bark (_that of the poet_) inferior far to his (_that of the philosopher_), On your broad main doth wilfully appear. Your shallowest help will hold me (_the poet_) up afloat Whilst he (_the philosopher_) upon your soundless deep doth ride."