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 un known, although his height be taken.
Love is not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
ًً
ًWithin his bending sickle's compass come,
Love alters not with his prief 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
لاتدعني في سبيل تزاوج الالباب الوفية
أقر بالعراقيل :فليس الحب حبّاً
ان يتحول عندما يحلو التحول له
او يذعن راضيا للزوال عند من يبغي زواله.
لا، انما الحب اشارة قد ثبتت
ترقبُ العواصف دون أن تتزعزع،
هو نجم تستدل به السفن الهائمة،
لايعرف تاثيره وان يقس ِالبحارة ُ علوهُ .
وليس الحبُ أضحوكة الزمن ، وان يقع خداه وثغرهُ الوردي
في مدى منجله ِ المنحني،
ولايتحول الحبُ في وجيز ِ ساعات ِ الزمن أو لياليه،
بل رغم الخطوب يدوم ُ حتى حافة ِ القيامة .
ان يكن شططا هذا وعلي ثبت برهانهُ ،
فلا نظمتُ يوما ً، لا ولا رجلٌ أحبّ !
Summary
This complex poem grapples with the idea of love desire as it exists in longing, fulfillment, and memory. (That is to say, it deals with lust as a longing for future pleasure; with lust as it is consummated in the present; and with lust as it is remembered after the pleasurable experience, when it becomes a source of shame.) At the beginning of the poem, the speaker says that “lust in action”—that is, as it exists at the consummation of the sexual act—is an “expense of spirit in a waste of shame.” He then devotes the rest of the first quatrain to characterizing lust as it exists “till action”—that is, before the consummation: it is “perjured, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame / Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust.”
In the second quatrain, the speaker jumps between longing, fulfillment, and memory. No sooner is lust “enjoyed” than it is “despised.” When lust is longing, the fulfillment of that longing is hunted “past reason”; but as soon as it is achieved, it becomes shameful, and is hated “past reason.” In the third quatrain, then, the speaker says that lust is mad in all three of its forms: in pursuit and possession, it is mad, and in memory, consummation, and longing (“had, having, and in quest to have”) it is “extreme.” While it is experienced it might be “a bliss in proof,” but as soon as it is finished (“proved”) it becomes “a very woe.” In longing, it is “a joy proposed,” but in memory, the pleasure it afforded is merely “a dream.” In the couplet, the speaker says that the whole world knows these things well; but nevertheless, none knows how to shun lust in order to avoid shame: “To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.”
Commentary
The situation of the speaker of this poem is that of a person who has experienced each stage of lust, and who is therefore able to articulate the shame he now feels with reference to his past desire and its consummation. Though the lust of this poem is not explicitly sexual, it is described in highly carnal language—bloody, full of blame, savage, rude, swallowed bait. The most important device of this poem is its rapid oscillation between tenses and times; it jumps between the stages of lust almost uncontrollably, and in so doing creates a composite picture of its subject from all sides—each tinged by the shameful “hell” the speaker now occupies.
Another important device, and a rare one in the sonnets, is the poem’s impersonal tone. The speaker never says outright that he is writing about his own experience; instead, he presents the poem as an impersonal description, a catalogue of the kinds of experience offered by lust. But the ferocity of his description belies his real, expressive purpose, which is to rue his own recent surrender to lustful desire. (The impersonal tone is exceedingly rare in the sonnets, and is invoked only when the speaker seeks most defensively to deflect his words away from himself—as in Sonnet 94, where his tone of impersonal description covers a deep-seated vulnerability.)
ANALYSIS
marriage...impediments (1-2): T.G. Tucker explains that the first two lines are a "manifest allusion to the words of the Marriage Service: 'If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony'; cf. Much Ado 4.1.12. 'If either of you know any inward impediment why you should not be conjoined.' Where minds are true - in possessing love in the real sense dwelt upon in the following lines - there can be no 'impediments' through change of circumstances, outward appearance, or temporary lapses in conduct." (Tucker, 192).
bends with the remover to remove (4): i.e., deviates ("bends") to alter its course ("remove") with the departure of the lover. ever-fixed mark (5): i.e., a lighthouse (mark = sea-mark).
Compare Othello (5.2.305-7): Be not afraid, though you do see me weapon'd;
Here is my journey's end, here is my butt,
And very sea-mark of my utmost sail. the star to every wandering bark (7): i.e., the star that guides every lost ship (guiding star = Polaris).
Shakespeare again mentions Polaris (also known as "the north star") in Much Ado About Nothing (2.1.222) and Julius Caesar (3.1.65). Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken (8): The subject here is still the north star. The star's true value can never truly be calculated, although its height can be measured. Love's not Time's fool (9): i.e., love is not at the mercy of Time. Within his bending sickle's compass come (10): i.e., physical beauty falls within the range ("compass") of Time's curved blade. Note the comparison of Time to the Grim Reaper, the scythe-wielding personification of death.
edge of doom (12): i.e., Doomsday
Sonnet 116 is about love in its most ideal form. It is praising the glories of lovers who have come to each other freely, and enter into a relationship based on trust and understanding. The first four lines reveal the poet's pleasure in love that is constant and strong, and will not "alter when it alteration finds." The following lines proclaim that true love is indeed an "ever-fix'd mark" which will survive any crisis. In lines 7-8, the poet claims that we may be able to measure love to some degree, but this does not mean we fully understand it. Love's actual worth cannot be known it remains a mystery. The remaining lines of the third quatrain (9-12), reaffirm the perfect nature of love that is unshakeable throughout time and remains so "ev'n to the edge of doom", or death.
In the final couplet, the poet declares that, if he is mistaken about the constant, unmovable nature of perfect love, then he must take back all his writings on love, truth, and faith. Moreover, he adds that, if he has in fact judged love inappropriately, no man has ever really loved, in the ideal sense that the poet professes. The details of Sonnet 116 are best described by Tucker Brooke in his acclaimed edition of Shakespeare's poems:
[In Sonnet 116] the chief pause in sense is after the twelfth line. Seventy-five per cent of the words are monosyllables; only three contain more syllables than two; none belong in any degree to the vocabulary of 'poetic' diction. There is nothing recondite, exotic, or metaphysical in the thought. There are three run-on lines, one pair of double-endings. There is nothing to remark about the rhyming except the happy blending of open and closed vowels, and of liquids, nasals, and stops; nothing to say about the harmony except to point out how the fluttering accents in the quatrains give place in the couplet to the emphatic march of the almost unrelieved iambic feet. In short, the poet has employed one hundred and ten of the simplest words in the language and the two simplest rhyme-schemes to produce a poem which has about it no strangeness whatever except the strangeness of perfection. (Brooke, 234)
تجميعي