This poem is a sonnet of 14 lines, written in the traditional Shakespearean sonnet format which Shakespeare uses throughout his sonnet cycle. It is part of the initial 126 sonnets, all of which are thought to be addressed to the same unknown young man, known as the Fair Youth by scholars.

In the sonnet, the speaker describes how, when reading older works ("the chronicle of wasted time") and, potentially, when simply thinking about the past, he often sees references to beauty. This might be the beauty of "lovely knights" or "ladies dead," but, either way, when the speaker reads these descriptions of beautiful people, he is convinced that the beauty of his beloved would have been singled out for praise in the same way, as he fits perfectly into the idea of what is considered beautiful.

The speaker determines, then, that the "praise" expressed by those who are writing in the past was actually prophetic. He feels that every beautiful person ever described, and every expression of beauty ever committed to "rhyme," is actually an anticipation of his own beloved. These people with their "antique pen[s]" were only "prefiguring" the subject of the sonnet.

The speaker is only sad that, in the end, the writers did not have sufficient skill to express the "worth" of his beloved. He, the beloved, is too beautiful, engendering "wonder" in those who look upon him in the present day, while the speaker is unable to "praise" him adequately with words.