Can someone describe the imagery in sonnet 116?

Question

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.

Answer 1

This statement from sparknotes is accurate, as amhbas points out in her response above: "The language of Sonnet 116 is not remarkable for its imagery or metaphoric range. In fact, its imagery, particularly in the third quatrain (time wielding a sickle that ravages beauty's rosy lips and cheeks), is rather standard within the sonnets, and its major metaphor (love as a guiding star) is hardly startling in its originality."

What sparknotes does NOT comment on, however, is far more important to this particular poem. It's the figures of sound, not the figures of speech that Shakespeare exploits so effectively here (since I can't use italics or boldface on Y!A, I'll used CAPS); for example, the assonance and consonance of "STAR to every wAndering BARK," "FINDS / Or BENDS with . . . ," "BRIEF hours and WEEKS," "ERROR . . . I NEVER writ, no no man EVER loved," etc., etc.

Or note the alliteration and consonance that sets the tone at the very beginning, "Marriage of true Minds / AdMit iMpediMents," and rings out in the final line, "NeveR wRit, Nor No man eveR . . . ."

In my comments on your previous questions I pointed out one of the most memorable features of the poem, the treacherous hissing sounds in the lines about the inevitable attacks of Father Time: "Love'S not Time'S fool, though roSy lipS and cheekS / Within his bending Sickle'S compaSS come." The lines are even hard to read, and that reflects upon how hard it is for us to accept Time's depradations. We have to fight against that "sickle's compass." But the blows hit home like a hammer in the repetition of the final phrase of those lines: "COMpass COME."

Well, I could go on and on, but I doubt that you need a full-court press.

One other interesting use of effective language sets the tone in the first line. It would be more natural to say, "Let me now admit impediments to the marriage of true minds," but by reversing the prepositional phrase and the verb phrase, Shakespeare puts the emphasis at the end of the first line on the most important phrase, and in fact the most important word, of the poem: "the marriage of true MINDS." It's because he is talking about love of MIND (or spirit or soul) rather than body ("rosy lips and cheeks"), that he can insist that it is unchanging, and death-defying.

Sex is intense, but vulnerable to time. It's momentary, and subject to physical absence and ageing. Not love of "true minds." Such love is steady and lifts one out of one's physical self: its "worth's unknown," that is, not as readily apparent as physical pleasures, but its "height be taken." It is the ideal, the uplifting standard by which all else on life's stormy sea ("tempests") is measured.

Answer 2

Sonnet 116 Imagery

Answer 3

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Not only is "Within the bending sickle's compass come" a GREAT pick-up line, why is it so hard for people to believe that 1) Shakespeare was a genius and 2) that he wrote everything he's credited with? We are so eager to tag the word "genius" on to everyone coming down the pike who definitely are NOT geniuses -- "the comic genius of Jim Carrey" for example -- but then we go and get suspicious of someone who rightly deserves it. People, especially geniuses!, can excel in more than one genre. It is why Mozart wrote sonatas, concertos, and operas. It is why James Joyce wrote novels, short stories, and a play. It is why Aretha Franklin can sing "Think" one minute and step in for an ailing Luciano Pavarotti the next. And the poems can easily be believed to be the work of the same man as the one who wrote the plays; his poems are very dramatic and imminently "playable" as little 14 line skits; whereas, his plays could rightly be called beautiful dramatic poetry. And as for whether a simple country bumpkin could've possibly written so realistically about the English court, I have a couple of questions for you non-believers. Was Arthur C. Clarke an astronaut? (He wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey.) Was Jules Verne a spelunker? (He wrote Journey to the Center of the Earth.) Was he a submarine captain? (He also wrote 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea) There is, I like to think, a gap between what we know from our daily lives and what we are unfamiliar with. Like two cliffs with a canyon between them. And the ability to span that gap is genius. Shakespeare -- a real person who wrote plays and poetry -- had it; most do not. People's inability to understand something shouldn't put them in such a defensive stance that they feel the need to tear that person down. If you like the poems, re-read a play. Macbeth is the shortest; Hamlet is the longest. Find one you might find interesting. The Lion King is a jungle version of Hamlet with animals. Anthony and Cleopatra could just as easily have been called JFK and Marilyn. Take your time. Read slowly. Read all the footnotes. Understand what you read. It may be tough, but there will be a sense of accomplishment when you are through that you've never had before.

Answer 4

Summary
This sonnet attempts to define love, by telling both what it is and is not. In the first quatrain, the speaker says that love--"the marriage of true minds"--is perfect and unchanging; it does not "admit impediments," and it does not change when it find changes in the loved one. In the second quatrain, the speaker tells what love is through a metaphor: a guiding star to lost ships ("wand'ring barks") that is not susceptible to storms (it "looks on tempests and is never shaken"). In the third quatrain, the speaker again describes what love is not: it is not susceptible to time. Though beauty fades in time as rosy lips and cheeks come within "his bending sickle's compass," love does not change with hours and weeks: instead, it "bears it out ev'n to the edge of doom." In the couplet, the speaker attests to his certainty that love is as he says: if his statements can be proved to be error, he declares, he must never have written a word, and no man can ever have been in love.
Commentary
Along with Sonnets 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?") and 130 ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"), Sonnet 116 is one of the most famous poems in the entire sequence. The definition of love that it provides is among the most often quoted and anthologized in the poetic canon. Essentially, this sonnet presents the extreme ideal of romantic love: it never changes, it never fades, it outlasts death and admits no flaw. What is more, it insists that this ideal is the only love that can be called "true"--if love is mortal, changing, or impermanent, the speaker writes, then no man ever loved. The basic division of this poem's argument into the various parts of the sonnet form is extremely simple: the first quatrain says what love is not (changeable), the second quatrain says what it is (a fixed guiding star unshaken by tempests), the third quatrain says more specifically what it is not ("time's fool"--that is, subject to change in the passage of time), and the couplet announces the speaker's certainty. What gives this poem its rhetorical and emotional power is not its complexity; rather, it is the force of its linguistic and emotional conviction.
The language of Sonnet 116 is not remarkable for its imagery or metaphoric range. In fact, its imagery, particularly in the third quatrain (time wielding a sickle that ravages beauty's rosy lips and cheeks), is rather standard within the sonnets, and its major metaphor (love as a guiding star) is hardly startling in its originality. But the language is extraordinary in that it frames its discussion of the passion of love within a very restrained, very intensely disciplined rhetorical structure. With a masterful control of rhythm and variation of tone--the heavy balance of "Love's not time's fool" to open the third quatrain; the declamatory "O no" to begin the second--the speaker makes an almost legalistic argument for the eternal passion of love, and the result is that the passion seems stronger and more urgent for the restraint in the speaker's tone.