Sonnet CXVI (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-fixéd 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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Is the sonnet about marriage? The opening lines have been paraphrased this way: "Let me not declare any reasons why two true-minded people should not be married." But I don't view the opening lines this way. After all, legal marriages are not symbols of true love. Plenty of people marry for wrong reasons.

I doubt that Shakespeare was thinking of his wife, Anne Hathaway, when he wrote these lines. She was far away in Stratford whereas the poet was probably in London or in a stately home of England, inspired by a soul-mate instead of his actual spouse.

Instead of a literal marriage, the poet talks about the marriage of true minds. It is not the same as a legal contract.

The poem’s speaker argues that true love is unwavering and permanent. If love alters, then it was not love in the first place. The word “love” should not be used if the feeling alters--some other word should be used. That is what is meant by “love is not love…”

Each of the sonnet’s four parts contributes different support to the thesis that true love is undying or unchangeable. “Impediments” (obstacles) don’t exist for those who know true love.

A Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains (groups of four lines) and a couplet (two rhyming lines).

Another famous type of sonnet is the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet, which has two parts: an octave (eight lines) and then a sestet (six lines that resolves or comments on a problem stated in the octave).

Shakespeare employs a “sight rhyme” with lines 2 and 4 since “love” and “remove” look like they should rhyme. That’s not the same as an “off rhyme,” also called a “slant rhyme.” An example would be “room” and “storm.”

Speaking of “storm,” I will point out that Shakespeare uses the synonym “tempest.” All things in nature will sway or fall during a bad storm, but true love is not impacted.

A “bark” here means a ship since ships are made out of wood. Bark on a tree can be a kind of wood.

The "ever-fixed mark" could be a lighthouse "that looks on tempests and is never shaken" but the mark could also be the soon-to-be cited guiding star--the North Star, Polaris--since that star can look down on tempests and itself not be shaken. Whether the mark is a lighthouse or star, personification is used since neither can literally "look."

The North Star's true value cannot be calculated. That's equally true about love--"Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken" (line 8). You can measure by miles the width of a star, and you can measure true love by saying it is deep or very deep, but the actual value of that North Star and of true love cannot be calculated.

True love is reliable like the North Star.

A sickle is a hand-held tool with a curved blade, called a “compass” here. It is used for harvesting grain--wheat, for example. It cuts down grass like the Grim Reaper cuts down life. But true love cannot be cut down like wheat.

Love is not “Time’s fool.” A fool in Shakespeare’s time was a servant of the king--an employee who had to submit to his master, to obey. But the poem is saying that true love does not submit to time.

The sonnet says the human body decays due to time, but the love stays stable. The human body is represented here by “red lips” and “cheeks.” As the decades pass, the lips are not so lovely, and the cheeks have winkles. But that doesn’t matter to people who have true love.

The word “doom” means Doomsday, or Judgment Day or the Second Coming. All Christians wait for Jesus to return on a cloud. At that time our resurrected bodies will be judged. Some (the sheep, according to the metaphor used by Jesus) will be judged worthy of bliss in the new kingdom. Others (the goats) will be annihilated in fire.

It is called the “day of doom” or Doomsday since some people are doomed--a bad day for them.

Nobody knows when Doomsday will happen, but it will end history as we know it. Then a new time begins with the Kingdom of Heaven (no sin, no injustice).

The poem says that true love bears “it” out (does not alter with time). It stays stable until Doomsday--that is, until the end of time.

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