Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
William Shakespeare. 15641616162. Sonnets xviii
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-fixèd mark, | 5 |
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; | 10 |
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 proved, | |
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. |