Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 116 is a unique lyric that creates the ideal of love through administration of various techniques . Shakespeare 's love is a `marriage of true minds , depicting love as a pure incorruptible sentiment which is unyielding to external forces and difficulties . Love is intact even if the lover turns out to be unfaithful

Let me not to the marriage of two minds .Admit impediments

The persona gives love determined , courageous , and guiding qualities through the use of metaphorical comparisons , tone , epithet , repetition and wishes to make

bold statement of love in the face of Time 's decay The rigid fourteen lines of the sonnet are filled with an abundance of poetic and literary techniques that help to convey these main ideas Grimes ,2007

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 is unknown , although his height be taken

Love is high above , like pole star , the cosmic lighthouse which guides sailors in the middle of severe sea storms . The vessels may toss and roll into the violent waves but the star remains `an ever fixed mark It 's value is incalculable though altitude can be measured , thus remaining a mystery . In line 7 , wandering bark means a wooden masthead of the ship which is shaken by the tempest

Love 's not Time 's fool , though rosy lips and cheeks .But bears it out even to the edge of doom

Time has no withering powers over love . It is ageless , changeless and immortal even in the face of doom 's day . Though it may take away the transient physical beauty but true love cannot be harmed by the arc of time 's sickle . Shakespeare raises love to the heights of divinity which probably no other poet has ever done . He concludes the sonnet with declaration that he would disown his poetry if proved wrong . Anyone who does so has actually not loved

If this be error and upon me proved . I never writ , nor no man ever loved

Poets repetition of certain words- `love is not love , `alters when alteration finds ' and `remover to remove ' makes the ideas more emphatic in synergy with eternal nature of love . The theme of the poem is `the real love is steady in all adversities and even unaffected by time . In sonnet116 , two possible symbols are Star and Time . Star here is North Star , the symbol of guidance , the spatial lighthouse to everyone .Time is a traditional symbol of decay and aging . Rhyme scheme of the poem is abab cdcd efef in the three quatrains and gg in the concluding couplet English sonnets are said to be made of three quatrains and a couplet The lines 1-4 , 5-8 and 9-12 group together and the last two lines group together

Assonance means repeating the same vowel sound plus their combinations and variations . Line 7 repeats the same variation of a sound in three of...