Cry Freedom

SONNET 116 | PARAPHRASE | | Let me not to the marriage of true minds | Let me not declare any reasons why two | | Admit impediments. Love is not love | True-minded people should not be married. Love is not love | | Which alters when it alteration finds, | Which changes when it finds a change in circumstances, | | Or bends with the remover to remove: | Or bends from its firm stand even when a lover is unfaithful: | | O no! it is an ever-fixed mark | Oh no! it is a lighthouse | | That looks on tempests and is never shaken; | That sees storms but it never shaken; | | It is the star to every wandering bark, | Love is the guiding north star to every lost ship, | | Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. | Whose value cannot be calculated, although its altitude can be measured. | | Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks | Love is not at the mercy of Time, though physical beauty | | Within his bending sickle's compass come: | Comes within the compass of his sickle. | | Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, | Love does not alter with hours and weeks, | | But bears it out even to the edge of doom. | But, rather, it endures until the last day of life. | | If this be error and upon me proved, | If I am proved wrong about these thoughts on love | | I never writ, nor no man ever loved. | Then I recant all that I have written, and no man has ever [truly] loved. | |

ANALYSISmarriage...impediments (1-2): T.G. Tucker explains that the first two lines are a "manifest allusion to the words of the Marriage Service: 'If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony'; cf. Much Ado 4.1.12. 'If either of you know any inward impediment why you should not be conjoined.' Where minds are true - in possessing love in the real sense dwelt upon in the following lines - there can be no 'impediments' through change of circumstances, outward appearance,