Idea take a shrine
Of crystal flesh, through which to shine;
Meet you her, my wishes,
Bespeak her to my blisses,
And be ye called my absent kisses.
The poet is supposing that the girl whom he is to marry may not as yet even have been born, for though men in the world of scholarship can marry only late in life, the wife is generally quite young. Marriage is far away in the future for the student, therefore these fancies. What he means to say in short is about like this:
“Oh, my wishes, go out of my heart and look for the being whom I am destined to marry—find the soul of her, whether born or yet unborn, and tell that soul of the love that is waiting for it.” Then he tries to describe the imagined woman he hopes to find:
I wish her beauty
That owes not all its duty
To gaudy ’tire or glist’ring shoe-tie.