Sonnet 116 – William
Shakespeare
Sonnet 116
was published in 1609 by William Shakespeare. It is a Shakespearean sonnet. It has three quatrains,
followed by a final rhyming couplet.
Shakespeare's Sonnets is the title of a collection of 154
sonnets by William Shakespeare, which covers themes such as the passage of
time, love, beauty and mortality. The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a
young man; the last 28 to a woman.
William Shakespeare (1564 –1616) was an English poet,
playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English
language and the world's outstanding dramatist. He is often called England's
national poet, and the "Bard of Avon".
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 wand'ring 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.
In the first quatrain, the poet says that love is “marriage
of true minds”. It is perfect and unchanging. It does not change; when it finds
changes in the person you love.
“Love is not love which alters
When it alteration finds”
In the second quatrain, Love is presented through a
metaphor of “Star”, which guides people to find way when they are lost.
In the third quatrain, poet explains what love we can is
not. Beauty fades away with time. For example – “Rosy lips and pink cheeks”. Love
doesn’t change with hours and week.
In the last couplet, the poet challenges his own
understanding of what love is. He says that if his understanding has some
errors, then he must never write nor any man is ever in love.
This sonnet presents the extreme ideal qualities of love.
In the modern times, the concept of love has changed. We can interpret this
poem from modern point of view.
Reference:-
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