Love is not love which alters

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 wand'ring 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.

 

A sonnet by William Shakespeare