Perhaps his most metaphorical love sonnet, 116’s imagery is as vast as the path of its guiding star. Covering no less a topic of love, by describing as much about what it is not, than to what it elusively is.
Sonnet 116
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 wand'ring 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 prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
by William Shakespeare. If you would like to read more, we recommend these book links:
Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets: A New Commentary by Don Paterson
The Sonnets (Annotated by Henry N. Hudson with an Introduction by Charles Harold Herford)
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