A Marriage of True Minds

The Marriage of True Minds
“The Marriage of True Minds” by William Shakespeare, actually known as “Sonnet 116”, is a beautiful love poem. The whole poem is mainly about how true love is permanent and everlasting. The writer uses many metaphors to compare love to and uses a stately tone. Shakespeare speaks of love as if it were human to express the importance of it. He tells us how genuine love can be and even when his partner changes and gets older, his love for her will not change. His love will be an eternal love that will stay with him until his death. Though the theme of this poem romance, love and its strength, the ways he explains his love through metaphors is impressive.
Shakespeare says that love is not affected by time and its passing. Time is love’s most powerful enemy and however powerful time is, he is certain that love is still stronger. He also says that love is so strong that even when they grow older, it will still be there, whereas physical beauty fades. Love doesn’t change or stop even when that the person he feels affection for does. He states that “Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks / Within his bending sickle’s compass come” (720). At first, the question I had was “Why did he refer to a sickle?’ The reference to the sickle, a handheld agricultural tool with a sharp curved blade, shows just how much of a threat Shakespeare views time. Like death, time too carries his sickle waiting to steal love that is based on the beauty of youth, but love cannot be fooled by time. Love cannot be measured in “brief hours and weeks” (720), for love is eternal and it “bears it out even to the edge of doom” (720).
He gives many metaphors in this poem that expresses his thoughts on love and how it is stable. Shakespeare is making a declaration of his thoughts on love and I happen to agree with him. He says that love does not "alter when it alteration finds" or "bend with the remove to remove" (719). If love is altered by another, a “remover” of love, it was not love. The way he explains how love is unchanging and constant is when he says that love “is an ever-fixed mark / that looks on tempests and is never shaken" (719). This also means that love cannot be shaken by hard times; that it’s unwavering.
Shakespeare refers to love as a force itself, overcoming obstacles and never changing. This force can be seen when Shakespeare states that love "is the star to every wandering bark" (719). We all know that sailors used stars to guide for directions. That quote was used to say that love, like a star, gives you direction to our lives and it’s our guide. He believes that love is strong enough to bear temptation and uncertainty. If what he has stated is proven to be wrong he “never writ, nor no man ever loved” (720). Since we know that Shakespeare has written and that men have loved, Shakespeare's hypothesis about love must be true; it is constant.
In conclusion, from the very first line of “The Marriage of True Minds”, I understood that one must not just love by their minds but by heart also. For me, this poem basically says that love is everlasting and will not be true if altered by someone or something. We must accept obstacles true love shouldn’t be affected through difficulty or bad situations. The value of love cannot be identified though we know how much we love someone. Love is strong that time is no match it. Even the edge of doom, death cannot destroy love because it’s eternal.