When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rime,
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have express’d
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And for they looked but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
In plain English
When I read old love poetry—chronicles of praise for beautiful women and noble men long dead—I notice something striking: the poets were always describing someone like you. They celebrated particular features: hands, feet, lips, eyes, foreheads. All their detailed praise seems to have been aiming at you, even though they lived centuries before you existed.
In this sense, all those ancient poets were actually prophesying your arrival. They couldn't see you directly, only sensed what beauty might look like. And that blindness limited them—they simply didn't have the skill to do justice to your actual worth. We who live now and can actually see you face-to-face are in an even worse position: we have the capacity to recognize your beauty, but we lack the words to express it.
