Sonnet 116 by 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 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 loved.

I was drawn to this poem primarily because it is a Shakespearean sonnet, and as a thespian, I sure do love some Shakespeare. As I read the sonnet, I found myself having to re-read lines to make sure I absorbed their meaning. A Shakespearean sonnet is 14 lines, usually with some sort of meter like iambic pentameter or tetrameter with a rhyming couplet at the sonnet's close. In this poem, Shakespeare adheres to iambic pentameter in which there are five feet or ten syllables per line with an emphasis on every other syllable. Also, in the first twelve lines, every other line rhymes.

The line "Love is not love/ Which alters when it alteration finds" stumped me at first due to the repetition of the word alters, so I had to read the line a few times before it sank in. Shakespeare's use of 'alter' twice creates a nice alliteration and also creates a twist in the line that seems confusing but makes sense if you look deeper. He is trying to tell us that true love does not judge or try to change- true love sticks around and remains steadfast even when the world around us shifts and evolves.

Another part of the poem that caught my eye was "It is the star to every wandering bark.” The denotation of "star" is a burning ball of gas millions of miles away from where we sit on earth, while the connotation of "star" is quite different. For most people, the star is a symbol of hope, probably due to the popularity of the story of the birth of Christ in which Magi and shepherds follow the bright star to the spot where the newborn baby Jesus was laying. Stars were the guiding light both both emotionally and physically. With the star reference, Shakespeare is comparing love to hope and the promise of being new again- of finding our own bliss.