For shame! deny that thou bear'st love to any, XI. Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly? IX. Lo! in the orient when the gracious light VIII. Then let not winter's ragged hand deface VII. Those hours, that with gentle work did frame VI. Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend V. Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest IV. When forty winters shall beseige thy brow, III. FROM fairest creatures we desire increase, II. 2012.You can buy the Arden text of these sonnets from the online bookstore: Shakespeare's Sonnets (Arden Shakespeare: Third Series) I. It’s amazing, the talent in your local poetry groups.Ĭliffs Notes, Sonnet 116 © 2016 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. To that end, I practice writing poetry when I am in the mood, and read the masters, and attend local poetry-slams. The secret poet within me hopes to one day develop more poetic skill, whether it is writing free-verse, or crafting a more traditional rhyming style of prose. He is immortal, because we hear his words and feel their impact. Moreover, he adds that, if he has in fact judged love inappropriately, no man has ever really loved, in the ideal sense that the poet professes.įive hundred years after his time on this earth, the Bard of Avon’s crafting of ideals and emotions into words evokes powerful feelings in the reader. In the final couplet, the poet declares that, if he is mistaken about the constant, unmovable nature of perfect love, then he must take back all his writings on love, truth, and faith. The remaining lines of the third quatrain (9-12), reaffirm the perfect nature of love that is unshakeable throughout time and remains so “ev’n to the edge of doom”, or death. Love’s actual worth cannot be known – it remains a mystery. In lines 7-8, the poet claims that we may be able to measure love to some degree, but this does not mean we fully understand it. The first four lines reveal the poet’s pleasure in love that is constant and strong, and will not “alter when it alteration finds.” The following lines proclaim that true love is indeed an “ever-fix’d mark” which will survive any crisis. The poet praises the glories of lovers who have come to each other freely, and enter into a relationship based on trust and understanding. Sonnet 116 is about love in its most ideal form. The general context, however, makes it clear that the poet’s temporary alienation refers to the youth’s inconstancy and betrayal, not the poet’s, although coming as it does on the heels of the previous sonnet, the poet may be trying to convince himself again that “Now” he loves the youth “best.” Sonnet 116, then, seems a meditative attempt to define love, independent of reciprocity, fidelity, and eternal beauty: “Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks / Within his bending sickle’s compass come.” After all his uncertainties and apologies, Sonnet 116 leaves little doubt that the poet is in love with love. The interpretation of this poem is open to many speculations, the most compelling of which I found in Cliffs Notes, and which I quote here:ĭespite the confessional tone in this sonnet, there is no direct reference to the youth. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of iambic pentameter, which is a type of poetic meter: one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable. The English sonnet has three quatrains (verses), followed by a final rhyming couplet. Sonnet 116 is typical of what we think of as a classic English sonnet. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,īut bears it out even to the edge of doom: Within his bending sickle’s compass come, Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Whose worth’s unknown although his height be taken. That looks on tempests and is never shaken We haven’t waxed poetic over Shakespeare recently, and I think it’s time to consider the prose of the master, both its meaning and its construction.