In the beginning of the poem, the writer expresses his love for a woman with a great beauty ("Lady, though your rare beauties prompt my rhyme") but then, he starts to express anguish ("But, with such burthen on my shoulders set"), this sonnet is interpreted as a poem about defeat because the writer expresses his discouragement about not being able to describe in words the lady's beauty ("My mind, its frailty feeling, cannot climb, and shrinks alike from polish'd and sublime"), finally in the last lines he says that the pen, hand and intellect, are defeated on the first attempt at something, referring to him being defeated while trying to write about the woman's beauty ("And oft have I the tender verse essay'd, But still in vain; pen, hand, and intellect in the first effort conquer'd are and check'd.").
