Let me not to the marriage of true minds

  Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration¹ 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 rosy² 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 doom³.

If this be error and upon me proved,

  I never writ⁴, nor no man ever loved.