... and mortality. Sonnet 116 attempts to define love by telling us both what it is and what it isn't. The poem employs a simple ABAB rhyme scheme and ordinary monosyllabic language to emphasise how simple true love is. Essentially Sonnet 116 presents the extreme ideal of romantic love: unchanging, never fading, ... language, describing love as a fixed "star" that guides lost ships. The third quatrain describes what love is not - susceptible to time. The final couplet attests the narrator's conviction, he vows, if his words prove to be wrong, then he must have "never writ" nor "ever loved"....

• Word Count: 1578
• Approx Pages: 6