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.