Sonnet Spotlight: Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

Morning bloggers! As a way of gently easing you into the week, I thought that I'd share with you, one of my favourite ever poems by Shakespeare, Sonnet 116. It truley is beautiful.....

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 proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

I’ve always loved its romantic idealism, though — the idea that love holds fast even when everything around it changes. Or that it remains true, even when obstacles, or impediments, are put in its way—if love is mortal, changing, or impermanent, the speaker writes, then no man ever loved. To me, it’s a poem about courage and I think that is why I find it so charming!

Happy Monday!

Saskia XO