sonnet 116

let me not to the marriage of true minds

admit impediments. love is not love

which alters when it alterations 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