Shakespeare's Sonnet 59

If there be nothing new, but that which isHath been before, how are our brains beguil’d,Which labouring for invention bear amissThe 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 sayTo 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.

If nothing is new, and everything that exists has existed before, how deceived our minds are when, struggling to invent something, they mistakenly give birth a second time to a child already born! If only the written record could look back, even through five hundred journeys of the sun, and show me your likeness in some ancient book, from the time when thoughts were first put into writing. Then I could see what the ancient world would say about the wonderfully assembled beauty of your body: whether we have improved, whether they were better, or whether each returning cycle is the same. I am certain that the gifted writers of earlier days gave admiring praise to people less deserving than you.