A Sonnet of Love by William Shakespeare

by Christine Sine

A series of poems on love would not be complete without Shakespeare’s famous Sonnet 116. The sonnet appeared in Emma Thompson’s screenplay for the film of Sense and Sensibility, and is memorably quoted by Kate Winslet, who played romantic Marianne. Perhaps you would like to watch this delightful Jane Austin movie and quote the sonnet to your love this Valentine’s Day.

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.

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