When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
“His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”

Belloc’s couplet wryly imagines an epitaph that values literary survival over moral reputation. The speaker concedes serious personal failings (“sins…scarlet,” echoing biblical language for conspicuous guilt) yet hopes posterity will still read his work. The humor lies in the blunt trade-off: condemnation may be inevitable, but obscurity is the deeper fear for a writer. It also hints at the uneasy separation between an author’s life and art—suggesting that, whatever judgment falls on the person, the books might outlast it and continue to matter to readers.