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William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the Marriage of True Minds


              1Let me not to the marriage of true minds
              2Admit impediments. Love is not love
              3Which alters when it alteration finds,
              4Or bends with the remover to remove.
              5O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
              6That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
              7It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
              8Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
              9Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
            10Within his bending sickle's compass come;
            11Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
            12But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
            13If this be error and upon me prov'd,
            14I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

Notes

4] remover: the one who departs from love.

8] worth's unknown: man cannot grasp the star's heavenly worth and astrological infuence.

12] edge of doom: the brink of Doomsday.


Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: William Shakespeare, Shake-speares sonnets (London: G. Eld for T. T., 1609). STC 22353. Facs. edn.: London: J. Cape, 1925. PR 2750 B48 1609b ROBA.
First publication date: 1609
RPO poem editor: F. D. Hoeniger
RP edition: 3RP 1.143.
Recent editing: 2:2002/3/28

Form: sonnet
Rhyme: ababcdcdefefgg


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