Sunday 1 October 2017

Weekly Poem: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

So, I was thinking a while back that it might be nice to share some of my favourite poems on here, and decided to try doing a weekly post. Despite getting a few posts together I didn't get round to actually posting anything, but I found this in my drafts recently and thought I might as well give it a go. How long I will keep it up I cannot say, but I have a few poems lined up for the coming weeks at least.

This was originally meant to be posted back in February, and I chose the poem in honour of Valentine's day and of I Love Austen Week (since the poem is quoted in the 1995 version of Sense & Sensibility and always makes me think of Marianne & Willoughby). It doesn't really fit quite so well now, but I've decided to share it anyway.
 
image by Christian Hebell // Creative Commons Zero
 Sonnet 116
 
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-fixèd mark,
    That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
    Whose worth's unknown, although his heart 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.
 
William Shakespeare

No comments:

Post a Comment