- What’s in the brain, that ink may character,
- Which hath not figur’d to thee my true spirit?
- What’s new to speak, what now to register,
- That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
- Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
- I must each day say o’er the very same;
- Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
- Even as when first I hallow’d thy fair name.
- So that eternal love in love’s fresh case,
- Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
- Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
- But makes antiquity for aye his page;
- Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
- Where time and outward form would show it dead.