AlphaPoem of the Week - Sonnet 116

Before I become all-consumed by my first novel project starting tomorrow, I thought I'd post this week's poem, Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare.

This is another favourite of mine (notice the recurring love theme in my choices!).  I adore the way that the first line and a half is almost overly wordy and serious - it just emphasises the simplicity of the statements that follow.

For Shakespeare, true love never dies.  What an old romantic.


Sonnet 116 - William Shakespeare

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.