Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume II. Love. 1904. | | | | VIII. Wedded Love | | “Let me not to the marriage of true minds” | | William Shakespeare (1564–1616) |
| | Sonnet CXVI.
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, | 5 |
| 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; | 10 |
| 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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