Sonnet 108

What’s in the brain that ink may character

Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?

What’s new to speak, what new 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.

What’s in my mind that I might still script

To reveal to you my full spirit?

What else to say, what have I kept,

To express my love and how you deserve it?

Nothing, you know, but like nightly prayers,

I must tell you, day by day,

Always mindful, so nothing’s lost, unawares,

Of the love of our first day.

Eternal love is always novel,

Never obsolete.

It does not unravel.

It’s always replete.

Each poem I write as though I’d slept

And had of love my first concept.