What you do
Still betters what is done.

In this couplet, the speaker praises an addressee whose present actions continually improve upon past achievements. The line suggests a standard of excellence that is not static: each new deed “betters” what came before, implying growth, refinement, and an almost competitive relationship with one’s own record. It can be read as encouragement toward continual self-surpassing—an ethic of progress where reputation is sustained not by resting on earlier successes but by renewing them through fresh accomplishment. The compressed phrasing also carries a rhetorical compliment typical of Shakespearean dialogue: admiration is intensified by the claim that even the best of what has been done is eclipsed by what the person does now.