Sonnet 116

by William Shakespeare · 1609 · 1 min read · 14 lines

In short

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare is a poem about true love as a bond that remains steady through change and time. The speaker begins by refusing to accept barriers to the union of faithful minds, then argues that love does not shift when circumstances or people change. To make that steadiness visible, he compares love to a fixed mark that withstands storms and a star that guides a wandering ship. He then turns to time, pictured with a curved sickle that can cut down youthful beauty but cannot change love. The poem ends with a bold challenge: if this account of love can be proved wrong, the speaker claims that he has never written and no one has ever loved.

Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not loveWhich 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 wandering bark,Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeksWithin 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 prov’d,I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

What it means, line by line

Lines 1 to 4: The speaker refuses to recognize obstacles to a union of true minds. He defines genuine love by what it does not do: change when it encounters change, or withdraw when someone pulls away. The repeated words about altering and removing emphasize the pressures that love must resist.

Lines 5 to 8: The poem shifts from denying false definitions to offering images of true love. Love is a fixed mark that storms cannot shake, then a star guiding a wandering ship. The star’s height can be measured, but its worth cannot, suggesting that love’s value exceeds what measurement can capture.

Lines 9 to 12: Time appears as a figure carrying a curved sickle, with youthful lips and cheeks within its reach. Physical beauty is vulnerable, but love is not controlled by time. By contrasting short hours and weeks with the edge of doom, the speaker stretches love’s endurance beyond ordinary human measures.

Lines 13 to 14: The final two lines turn the argument into a personal challenge. The speaker stakes both his own writing and the existence of human love on the truth of his claim. This sweeping statement closes the poem with certainty rather than offering a separate piece of proof.

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Three questions to think about

How do the fixed mark and guiding star offer different ways of understanding love’s steadiness?
What contrast does the poem draw between the effects of time on beauty and on love?
How does the final challenge affect your understanding of the speaker’s confidence about true love?

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200,000+ classics. Every format, free to start.

eBooks, audiobooks and 15-minute summaries, and any book printed at cost, large print too.

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From Les Sonnets de Shakespeare

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