03 December 2008

Let me not...

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.

s h a k e s p e a r e
sonnet 118

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My fave fave sonnet by Will S., and the only one I've committed to memory! I love lines 8 and 9 the best, it's so brilliant how the slightly awkward phrasing of the first few words forces you to pause and almost stumble, but then the rest of the phrase has a rhythm that drives straight through in such a stunning crescendo.

Who else do you love in the poetry department? I'm afraid I'm a bit mainstream and pedestrian in my poetry taste---I like the 'greatest hits' with mass appeal. Frost, e.e. cummings, anything that makes me tingle with romantic sentiment :)