Sonnet 116 by William Shakespare

Sonnet 116                                                                                       William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare, the greatest English poet and dramatist was born at Stratford-upon-Avon in England. He has written 36 plays and 154 sonnets in his short span of life. This sonnet is about true love. A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines in rigid metrical pattern and rhyme scheme. The poet uses a metaphor – a beacon or guiding star to bring out the nature of ‘true love’.

The poet says that he does not wish to put obstacles to the marriage of true lovers. True love is always unchangeable and un-removable. It is an ever-fixed mark. If one loves another, and the love is genuine, no one can destroy their love for each other. The poet compares true love to a light house giving light to the mariners at sea in ancient times. Similarly in every human life which is a voyage in the violent sea of the world, love acts as the beacon or guiding star giving happiness and purpose of life. True love is so precious that one cannot calculate its value. Again true love is ever lasting. It is not a fool of Time which destroys every thing in the world. Time is personified as a destroyer with a sickle in his hand and he makes ugly and old the beautiful rosy lipped girls and handsome young boys and finally they are all killed by Time. But time cannot destroy true and it lasts till the end of the world.

In the end of the sonnet Shakespeare declares that if any one disproves his statement of true love, he will stop writing and he can say that one man has ever loved.