Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
1609

Cold Library · Open Stacks · S-004004 · https://coldlibrary.com/s/004004
Rights: Published in 1609 (Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Thomas Thorpe); the author died in 1616. Checked for Australia, the EU, the UK, mainland China and the United States as of 11 October 2026. Guidance, not legal advice.
Source: Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1041/pg1041.txt (retrieved 2026-10-11)
Generated 2026-10-14 from https://coldlibrary.com/en/open-stacks/shakespeare-sonnet-116

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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 wandering 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.