From Amanda Mabillard,
Your Guide to Shakespeare.
FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!

• Annotations
  
• Paraphrase
  
• Commentary
  
• References
  
• Shakespearean Sonnet Basics
  

SONNET 116 - ANNOTATIONS
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 proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.