If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguil’d,
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 composed wonder of your frame;
Wh’r we are mended, or wh’r better they,
Or whether revolution be the same.
O! sure I am the wits of former days,
To subjects worse have given admiring praise.
In plain English
If everything that exists has existed before in some form, then our minds are tricked into thinking they're creating something new when they're really just rehashing the past. We exhaust ourselves trying to invent, but we're just carrying forward an old burden dressed up as something fresh.
I wish I could look backward through history—five hundred years of records—and find your image already captured in some ancient book, written down long ago when people first started recording beauty. Then I could see what the old world would have made of you, this marvel of a person standing before me now.
We could compare: are we better than they were, or were they better than us? Or does human nature just cycle through the same patterns over and over? I'm confident, though, that even the greatest minds of the past gave their highest praise to people far less worthy than you are.
