Shakespeare Sonnet 116
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 wand'ring 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.
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 wand'ring 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.
This is so profound that I hesitate to comment. I only do so in order to point out the thelogy. This is absolutely full of law, gospel, and imputation. It is clear that Shakespeare was well aware of the issues at stake during the English Reformation. - DOB
posted by David Browder at 6/24/2007 10:16:00 AM
1 Comments:
David, thanks a million for this, which I had long forgotten. It seems to me that Shakespeare has managed to pick out agapé from all the other English meanings of “love” and has come pretty close to defining it. So, later this week when I talk about John’s First Epistle while John Harper is in Kanuga, I will quote this piece with a note of appreciation for your having put it in your blog.
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