The poet anticipates his own death, and includes the chance that the young man might die first. When the poet dies he will be soon forgotten, but when the young man dies he will live on as the subject of the poet's verse. This sonnet is distinct for its plain-spoken, simple collection of thoughtful statements. Most of the lines could be plucked out and joined at random to most other lines, and they would form complete and reasonable sentences. It is also distinct for its scarcity of metaphor. The poem, beginning with the first two lines, rocks back and forth between thesis and antithesis: "I shall live, you shall die, you shall live, I shall die …" The poem is a reconsideration of the idea that poetry can immortalize the young man. The previous sonnets in the Rival Poet group have hinted at retaliation for the young man's disloyal preference for another poet, and in this poem retaliation becomes activated as the sonnet considers how the poet will write his friend's epitaph. The poet will have a common grave, but the young man is provided with a tomb in the eyes of men. The tomb's monument is the sonnet itself, which, in the way of tombstones, will be read by generations in the future. Line 11 contains a morbid pun as it envisions the re-reading of an epitaph to be like a re-burial. The couplet has the young man being finally entombed in men's mouths "where breath most breathes”. That could be either an important final resting place, as words are breath, and life is breath. Or it could be insignificant as a breath will vanish quickly. That difference is going to be significant in the rest of the Rival Poet group.
Structure
Sonnet 81 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet, which has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the rhyme schemeABAB CDCD EFEF GG and is composed in iambic pentameter, a metre of five feet per line, with two syllables in each foot accented weak/strong. Most of the lines are examples of regular iambic pentameter, including the 5th line:
× / × / × / × / × / Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
The 2nd and 4th lines feature a final extrametrical syllable or feminine ending:
× / × / × / × / × / Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
The meter calls for line 8's "entombèd" to be pronounced as 3 syllables, and line 14's "even" as 1.
