What's in the braine that inck may character,
Which hath not figur'd to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speake, what new to register,
That may expresse my love, or thy deare merit?
Nothing, sweet boy, but yet like prayers divine,
I must each day say ore the very same,
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallowed thy faire name.
So that eternall love in loves fresh case,
Waighes not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinckles place,
But makes antiquitie for aye his page,
Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
Where time and outward forme would shew it dead.
Changes to the original text: end of line 2, comma changed to question mark; line 3, 'now to register' changed to 'new to register'; line 5, comma inserted after 'nothing';
In the first quatrain, the poet asks the tortuously complex question as to what there is in his brain that may be put in writing (inck may character) that has not been portrayed (figur'd to thee) to the beloved representing the truth, firstly, about how he (the poet) feels (my true spirit), and, secondly, what is there new to say about his love or his beloved's merit.
In the second quatrain, the poet likens the situation to the saying of prayers which one repeats over and over, the same every day, and behaving in a way that does not assume anything as granted, but rather acting as though it was again the first day of their meeting.
In the third quatrain, the poet projects that eternal love, ever fresh, may ignore (waighes not) the effects of time and ageing and wrinkles, and make time (antiquity) its servant.
In the final couplet, the poet remarks that thus love in its original state (the first conceit of love) can there be found where both the fact that their love is old (time) and outward appearance (outwarde forme) would seem to indicate that love was dead.