Sonnet 116

    Let me not to the marriage of true minds

    Read at more weddings than almost any other poem. The definition of love it offers — 'an ever-fixed mark' — is engraved on rings and quoted in vows worldwide.

    love
    constancy
    marriage
    eternity
    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.

    What It Means

    Shakespeare defines love by what it is not. It does not bend when circumstances change. It does not waver because of obstacles. It's a fixed point — a star that ships navigate by. It doesn't shift when someone ages or changes. Time brings the death of beauty, but love 'bears it out even to the edge of doom.' The final couplet makes this a bet: if I'm wrong about any of this, then no one has ever truly loved and I've never written a poem. The absolutism is the point.

    Context

    Part of the Fair Youth sequence. First published in the 1609 quarto. Sonnet 116 is one of the most frequently quoted poems in the English language.

    Buy the Arden edition of the Sonnets on Amazon →

    As an Amazon Associate, ShakespeareGo earns from qualifying purchases.

    Previous← Sonnet 115Those lines that I before have writ do lie,NextSonnet 117 →Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all
    ← All 154 sonnets