Sonnet 116

¹Let me not to the marriage of true minds

²Admit impediments. Love is not love

³Which alters when it alteration finds,

⁴Or bends with the remover to remove:

⁵O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

⁶That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

⁷It is the star to every wandering bark,

⁸Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

⁹Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

¹⁰Within his bending sickle's compass come:

¹¹Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

¹²But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

¹³If this be error and upon me proved,

¹⁴I never writ, nor no man ever loved.