Sonnet 59

If there be nothing new, but that which is

Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,

Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss

The second burthen of a former child?

O, that record could with a backward look,

Even of five hundred courses of the sun,

Show me your image in some antique book,

Since mind at first in character was done,

That I might see what the old world could say

To this composèd wonder of your frame:

Whe’er we are mended, or whe’er better they,

Or whether revolution be the same.

O, sure I am the wits of former days

To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

If there’s really nothing new under the sun,

The artist must be so dumb in his striving,

Laboring to give birth to something new for someone

Which has already been written, perfectly moving.

I wish a record, a history, had been kept

Of a thousand, two thousand years around the sun,

And I could find you in those pages wrapped,

And the art you inspired, already done—

So I could see what the old world could say

About the wonderful being you are.

Am I doing better, or better were they,

Or is it all one turn around one star?

No, I must believe that in all the world’s days,

None has deserved so much as you art’s praise.