Sonnet 116 | SONNET of the week

Poet: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Published: 1609

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

"Spruce Forest Night Sky Stars" by ForestWander Nature Photography / CC BY-SA 3.0 US, unmodified