The Sonnets

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 worthʼs unknown, although his height be taken.

Loveʼs not Timeʼs fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickleʼs 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 provʼd,

I never writ, nor no man ever lovʼd.