English Literature
International GCSE
SONNET 116
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 wand'ring 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.
, * exclamation reveals his passions and reinforces the
negations of the first quatrain
* bark= ship; in Elizabethan times ships were heavily
guided by stars
*metaphor
* personification
* rhyming couplet
*reference to the grim reaper
. Sonnet 116 is about the power and permanence of love in the face of
all obstacles and changes. This meaning essentially allows the narrator
to express that his own feelings confer to this ideal. The poem is a
declaration of eternal love as well as an exploration of the essence of
love.
Voice
First person narrative with a restrained and intensely disciplined tone.
The tone is assertive. The poem is not a direct address to anyone; it is
the poet ruminating on love.
Content and language
In the first quatrain, the narrator proposes the idea that although lovers
themselves might alter, if their love is true, it will never change. In the
International GCSE
SONNET 116
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 wand'ring 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.
, * exclamation reveals his passions and reinforces the
negations of the first quatrain
* bark= ship; in Elizabethan times ships were heavily
guided by stars
*metaphor
* personification
* rhyming couplet
*reference to the grim reaper
. Sonnet 116 is about the power and permanence of love in the face of
all obstacles and changes. This meaning essentially allows the narrator
to express that his own feelings confer to this ideal. The poem is a
declaration of eternal love as well as an exploration of the essence of
love.
Voice
First person narrative with a restrained and intensely disciplined tone.
The tone is assertive. The poem is not a direct address to anyone; it is
the poet ruminating on love.
Content and language
In the first quatrain, the narrator proposes the idea that although lovers
themselves might alter, if their love is true, it will never change. In the
