A blast from the past:

I've just finished reading three entries in each of 29 freshman journals. (That's about 21,750 words, by the way.) Two of the entries were on love: one a commentary on a love poem they had found and brought to class, the other a story (fiction or non-fiction, their choice) on True Love. It was heartening to read that many of them--most of them--believed in True Love, even against the backdrop of constant divorces and a lack of belief . . . and even downright scorn . . . of the concept in the "adult world."

True Love. Most of the "adults" I've talked to lately tell me that it is, essentially, bullshit. Married people. My counselor. My True Love. Friends. Even my fucking cats. It's just a naive concept held by children who haven't yet had the shit beaten out of them by the world. That's probably true. So count me amongst the naive children. I have known True Love, and I can still feel it throbbing in my soul . . . pulsing like a fatal wound, perhaps, but still letting me know that despite the cynicism of this goddamned world, despite the deplorable behavior of so many human beings, despite the fact that most "adults" don't have enough faith in them to walk through a puddle much less walk on the turbulent sea . . . True Love cannot be extinguished.

I will die of it, I'm sure. I don't care. Better dead than to be a coward. Or faithless.



Sonnet 116 by William Shake-speare

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-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 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 prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.



* Linda Sue Grimes on Shake-speare's Sonnet 116

Sonnet 116 dramatizes the nature of love, not ordinary affection but abiding love that he defines as the "marriage of true minds" that cannot be destroyed by fickle time.

First Quatrain: "Let me not to the marriage of true minds"
In the first quatrain, the speaker of Shakespeare sonnet 116 refers to love as “the marriage of true minds,” and alludes to the biblical injunction from Matthew 19:6 heard at wedding ceremonies, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

The speaker claims that love is ever steadfast and does not change even though some might think they see a reason for change. Also, real love cannot be disfigured in order to try to “remove it.”

The use of repetition “Love is not love,” “alters when it alteration finds,” and “bends with the remover to remove,” reinforces the idea of constancy on which the speaker is focusing throughout the sonnet.

Second Quatrain: "O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark"
In the second quatrain, the speaker metaphorically likens love to a polestar or the North Star, “an ever-fixed mark,” which serves as a guide for ships. This polestar is “an ever-fixed mark,” because even if the seas become rough and the ships are tossed about, the star itself remains unshaken, still capable of guiding the ship. And even though the distance of the polestar may be calculated by man, its value can never be determined.

The speaker, thus, is claiming that love has a kind of staying power that “stands unshaken midst the crash of breaking worlds,” as the great yogi/poet Paramahansa Yogananda said of man’s soul when it knows its union with the Oversoul. The speaker of sonnet 116 is likening love to the union of the individual soul with the Divine.

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Third Quatrain: "Love ’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks"
In the third quatrain, the speaker addresses the issue of love regarding the passage of time. The speaker declares that time cannot undermine love, because “Love’s not Time’s fool.” Even though the body comes under time’s power to change, love is not changed by anything time can do: “Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, / But bears it out even to the edge of doom.”

Even though the “rosy lips and cheeks” change and whither with age, love remains until death for those who have a “marriage of true minds.”

Couplet: "If this be error, and upon me prov’d"
In the couplet, the speaker implies that he is so sure of what he has just dramatized about the nature of true love, that if anyone can prove him wrong, then he never wrote and no one ever loved. This assertion places his potential adversary in a very difficult position, for the reader knows he has written and also that others have loved.



Read more at Suite101: Shakespeare Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds | Suite101.com http://poetry.suite101.com/article.cfm/shakespeare_sonnet_116#ixzz0ZaMAZ1Pk

* By the way, this website had the picture of Edward de Vere . . I didn't add it in. See? The Truth is Out There.