More for National Poetry Month

William Shakespeare. Great playwright (or was he?) but even better poet. I love many of his sonnets, but my favorite is Sonnet 116 (right? My abilities with Roman numerals are sketchy.), which I memorized in law school, during the morning hours as I got ready for classes. I found that memorizing the sonnet was a great way to relax before the Socratic method took over, and it helped keep my mind and memory sharp for class, too.

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.