LET ME NOT TO THE MARRIAGE (sonnet 116)

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.

The sonnet is arranged three quatrains and a final couplet. The three quatrains have the function to explain what is ‘love' in order to the way of looking at things of the poet .

He underline what is his idea of true love.

In the final rhyming couplet Shakespeare makes reference to his experience, he wants the reader to understand that what he said is true.

In the first quatrain Shakespeare makes a reference to the unchangeability of love.

This strong feeling must not change when it encounters an obstacle, it does not die.

In the second quatrain Shakespeare defines love as a "ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken".

The poet believes that love guides lovers through the right way .

In the third quatrain the poet underline the same concepts using other words, they underline the power and the importance of this feeling.

the rhyme scheme in the first quatrain is different from other Shakespearian schemes it is ABAC rather than i ABAB.

The reason why Shakespeare changed the usual rhyme scheme is that he wants to produce a different sound.