Sonnet · Love

Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

by William Shakespeare · 1609

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.

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“Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds” by William Shakespeare — quilloak.com/poems/sonnet-116

Quick facts

Poem: Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Poet: William Shakespeare
Published: 1609
Length: 14 lines
Form: Sonnet
Themes: Love

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape: 14 lines · one 14-line stanza
Line length: Lines run 10-12 syllables (median 10), consistent with pentameter. No single length dominates, which is normal once elision and contraction are in play.

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Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

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Author record: William Shakespeare1564–1616
Source record: QuillOak curated editionSonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds (1609) by william-shakespeare
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record: 1609
Text fingerprint: SHA-256 9e3827c7032eb8fd…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.

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About Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

First printed in the 1609 quarto of Shake-speares Sonnets, this is an English sonnet: three quatrains and a closing couplet in iambic pentameter, rhymed ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The argument builds by definition. The first quatrain says what love is not — it admits no impediments and does not alter when the beloved changes. The second turns to the poem's famous positive image: love as an "ever-fixed mark," a seamark or North Star ("the star to every wandering bark") whose altitude sailors can measure even though its full nature stays beyond them. The third quatrain sets love against Time itself, whose sickle takes rosy lips and cheeks but cannot bend real love before "the edge of doom."

The couplet stakes everything on a wager: if this is proved wrong, the speaker never wrote and no one ever loved — an impossible concession, since we are reading the writing. That legal, almost argumentative tone (impediments, proved, error) is why the poem suits weddings: it treats love as a vow with witnesses, not a mood.

Discussion questions: Who is the "marriage of true minds" between — lovers, or minds? Why does a poem about certainty lean on negatives and conditions? If you used it in a ceremony, which quatrain would you read aloud, and which would you cut?

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