Essentially, this sonnet presents the extreme ideal of romantic love: it never changes, it never fades, and it outlasts death and admits no flaw. What is more, it insists that this ideal is the only love that can be called “true”--if love is mortal, changing, or impermanent, the speaker writes, then no man ever loved. (Line 14) The basic division of this poem's argument into the various parts of the sonnet form is extremely simple: the first quatrain says what love is not changeable (Lines 2-4), the second quatrain says what it is a fixed guiding star unshaken by tempests (Lines 5-6), the third quatrain says more specifically what it is not “time's fool” (Line 9)--that is, subject to change in the passage of time, and the couplet announces the speaker's certainty. What gives this poem its rhetor

Then, the speaker tells what love is through a metaphor: a guiding star to lost ships “wandering barks” (Line 7) that are not susceptible to storms it “looks on tempests and is never shaken”. (Line 6) The speaker goes on to state his opinion of love and what love is: “It is an ever-fixed mark that looks upon tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wandering bark, whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.” (Lines 5-8) Love, which is usually undefined and gorgeous, becomes perfectly exact; either you have true love or you do not. The speaker then goes on to describe the permanence of love, how nothing can destroy its permanence or power. It looks upon a tempest and remains immutable; it is like the North Star that all boughs of the trees bend towards. Love seems completely immovable and utterly powerful. However, something that is so completely omnipotent should be able to keep its victims within its grasp. The speaker here exudes bitterness. He presents love as so utterly authoritative; it is not his own shortcomings that are preventing his happiness. He mentions of two of the biggest, most intangible forces in human nature, love and time. He puts the two at war, and states that love is once again victorious, exerting its power. The speaker states that love could endure time, although beauty cannot. He shows his weakness

Some topics in this essay:
, North Star, Surely Shakespeare, sonnet 116, “true” love, love speaker, impediments” lines 1-2, speaker goes, marriage true, passion love, speaker love, guiding star, fool” line, third quatrain,