Shakespeare's Sonnets (1923) Yale/Text/Sonnet 116
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For other versions of this work, see Sonnet 116 (Shakespeare).
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: 4
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 9
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. 12
If this be error, and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
4 remover: inconstant
remove: depart
8 worth: power, influence
height: altitude
10 his: Time's
12 edge of doom: judgment day