The poem “True Love” is William Shakespeare’s sonnet number 116. It belongs to the poet’s first series of sonnets addressed to certain Mr. W.H., a young man possessing excellent physical charm. Love, as was customary, is the theme dealt with in the poem. The inaugurating line “Let me not to the marriage of true minds” immediately sets forth what the poem is going to tell us. In certain anthologies the poem appears under the title “Let me not to the marriage of true minds”.
The poem is about love as it is distinct and different from lust or sensuality. The poet dose not admits “impediments in to the marriage of true minds”. Love, says the poet, is the union or marriage of minds true to each other. Two minds united in love never change their loyalty to each other. Love that changes when it finds occasion or opportunity for change is not love in the genuine sense of the term. It is not true love. It is, at its best, lust camouflaging as love. Love is strong. It is steadfast and constant. It does not “bend with the remover to remove”. No circumstance, however strong, can sever the bonding between true minds.
The exclamation ‘O no!’ at the beginning of quatrain two reinforces the steadfastness and infrangibility of love. This has been deftly done by the apt use of the pole-star (an ever-fixed mark) metaphor built into imagery. The pole-star is an ever-fixed on the northern sky. Before the invention of the mariners, compass the ship drafting in the darkness in the storms looked for the pole-star and determined the direction of their voyage. The pole-star was their guide. It was “the star to every wandering bark.” The pole-star looks on tempests and is never shaken. Similarly true love looks on circumstances bringing in change, but itself remains constant, unchanged. The height of the pole-star can be taken or is known. Its worth is too immense to be measured. Similarly true love is of immense worth or value for lovers: “wandering bark”.
In the third