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Question

Help me with this poem please?
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

Additional Details

9 minutes ago
who is speaking?
to whom is theoice speaking to?
when does it take place and what verb tense?
why is the speaker speaking?
what are the main points?
how does the title apply?

Answer 1

HI AS,

You know, I honestly think that if you read most poems out loud, most of your questions would disappear. The reason why I say this is because: 1) poems are meant to be read aloud (and no one new this more than Shakespeare!); and 2) when you read a poem aloud, you have to make that commitment of character, so your subconscious mind will often times give you the answer because you have to assign a voice and character to the poem. Sort of like going to an actor's audition and reading the lines. You may not know or understand the character, but your mind will automatically assign a voice and character to it. The other thing you can do is go to Audible.com and for a few measly (seriously, cheap) you can download someone else reading this poem, AND that too will help you with this assignment... much more than hoping someone gives you the CORRECT answer here.

Now as for the two previous answerers...

It bothers me to read either of the previous answers. The first answerer always seems compelled to offer up one of his poems as an answer. Let me take a quick moment to point something out: Dude, you are NOT THAT profound.

The second answerer has committed a different sin. He's posted an essay. I wish in my life I could find people who would be willing to do an hour's worth of work for the equivalent of two bucks in monopoly money and a gamble at getting another ten! I'd be a wealthy man!

Answer 2

Some Refelections:

The speaker is the poet, speaking about platonic love in metaphysical terms.
I gathered some few ideas from web-links that you might think about as you tackle the sonnet.

Love (the 'marriage of true minds') does not weaken when the
circumstances that gave rise to it are changed

'Love is not love /Which alters when it alteration finds'. Nay, it is a constant, like a star that glimmers fixed in the sky, far above the tempests that batter the wandering bark. And the navigator of life's ship can measure a star's height to obtain a reading of his own position; thus the star.

(Love) acts both as a symbol of constancy and as a beacon, guiding the voyager onwards.

Nor is Love at the mercy of Time; although the external manifestations of beauty ('rosy lips and cheeks') may fall within the arc of the Grim Reaper's sickle, Love itself does not decay or crumble with the passage of hours and weeks.
In Shakespeare's day readers would probably understand this in terms of the fool employed in large establishments by the nobility, a favoured character whose wit enlivened many a dull day. But their position was probably precarious, and they were liable to physical punishment, or dismissal.

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.

- bending sickle - the sickle had a curved blade, and several meanings of 'bending' are appropriate, as 1.) curved; 2.) causing the grass that it cuts to bend and bow; 3.) cutting a curved swathe in the grass.

- compass = scope, the arc of the circle created by the sweep of the sickle. But with a reference back to the nautical metaphors of the previous lines. Time, with his scythe, or sickle, sweeps down the mortal lovers, the rosy lips and cheeks, as if they were blades of grass.

- his = Time's. All life is fleeting, and human life is measured by the brief hours and weeks of experience.

- bears it out = endures, continues faithful.
the edge of doom = the last day, the day of judgement, the day of death. doom in Shakespeare can mean a person's death, as it still does in the phrase, to meet one's doom. Or it can be applied to the day of the Last Judgement, or the judgement itself.

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

- If this be error = if my claim that love lasts for ever is erroneous. error also suggests wandering (from the truth), as above in line 7. every wandering bark. From the Latin verb errare - to wander.

- upon me proved - a legalistic term, meaning, approximately, 'proved against me'. The combination of this term with that of error possibly implies religious heresy and action taken against it, as for example in the frequent practice used by the Inquisition to compel victims under torture to confess to the error of their ways.

- I never writ = I have never written anything.
nor no man ever loved = and no man has ever loved (even though he believed himself to be in love).

The fact that there is no logical connection between love's eternal status and whether or not the poet has written anything, or men think themselves to be in love, is largely irrelevant, because the poem has by now made its seemingly irrefutable claim. The weakness of the concluding couplet does contribute to a slight sense of disappointment, because the preceding lines are so vibrant with life and love. Perhaps this is intentional, in order to underscore the transitory nature of all that we experience, and to show that, despite our grandiose claims to immortality, we all must depart beneath the eternal vault, and love itself paradoxically, though eternal, is part of mortality:


Good luck

Answer 3

Marriage is

Arranged sex...

Love is not

At arrange...

Marrage is

Widows of

Sex...

Sex is not

Only for life...

Life is not only for

Sex...

life wanted sex...

Sex also wanted life...

Truley sex is not Love...

Love is also a sex...!

Understand with

Exprince get own...