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 prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man
ever lov’d.
Some thoughts…
On the Poet: William Shakespeare
(1564-1616), wrote in addition to his plays, 154 sonnets featuring love,
beauty, and impending mortality as their main themes. They were published in
1609 and abound in controversy and mystery. There is not only the eternal
question of whom they addressed; but also, to whom they were bequeathed; and,
whether the publisher (Thomas Thorpe) had secured the Bard’s permission to publish
his poetry. And whether, in fact, Shakespeare himself was the author of all 154
sonnets.
Barring any conclusive evidence to the contrary, let’s give the
Bard the credit of authorship; and set aside the other controversies for the
experts to sort out.
On the Poem:
The term sonnet is a derivative of sonetto
- Italian for ‘a little sound’ or ‘song’. The ordinary sonnet consists of
fourteen lines. The Shakespearean Sonnet is notable for having three quatrains
and a couplet with a rhyming scheme of abab, cdcd, efef,gg.
On a Personal Note: What I find most striking about this poem is its
deliberate, discursive tone.
Let
me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit
impediments.
The
poet is not talking of marriage in a literal sense, but of hearts united in
love. No obstacles should be permitted to bar such a union.
The next few lines are
a thoughtful look at what love is by
eliminating that which it is not.
Love
is not love
Which
alters when it alteration finds,
Love
is constant in the face of inconstancy – be it the fickleness of the beloved,
or changes in circumstances (you know - ‘for better or for worse, for richer or
for poorer, in sickness and in health’).
Or
bends with the remover to remove:
O,
no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
No one can ‘remove’ true love; it abides, it
endures, it prevails.
That
looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It
is the star to every wandering bark,
Love is steady in the face
of storms; the North Star by which we navigate our lives.
Whose
worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
This line continues the previous nautical allusion and the
metaphor of the North Star; the interpretation is that though the star’s
make-up is unfathomable, yet its position is known to mariners.
Love
’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within
his bending sickle’s compass come;
The charms of youth are subject to the changes inflicted upon them
by Time. Love, however, is untouched by its vicissitudes. The ‘bending sickle’
is a reference to the Grim Reaper, a personification of Death. Time brings Death
in its wake.
Love alters not with his
brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to
the edge of doom.
Love is immutable, eternal; ‘…until death do us part’.
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
And if it may be proved that what the poet says is false, then he
has never written anything true; nor has anyone ever loved.
The poet employs some weighty metaphors and Elizabethan legalese to declare his point. But leaving aside its solemnity and logical deconstruction, the
essence of the poem is the essence of love – l’amour est éternel.
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