Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Let me not to the marriage of true minds (Sonnet CXVI)

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 proved, 
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 
-- William Shakespeare


Ford Madox Brown.
Romeo and Juliet, 1867.
Watercolor, approximately 13 x 19 inches. Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, Manchester.

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