The poem that I chose to write about was "Let me not to the marriage of true minds" by Shakespeare. This poem well describes what love really means and what to expect when you experience it. I think that most people, including myself, get the wrong idea about love. Love to most is simply really caring about someone. Add lust to that formula and you have a very powerful dynamic between two people that can last for years sometimes. Yet at some point, that may end, and two people are left without love for each other in time.
What Shakespeare asked us to do in this poem, before really getting into what love means, was to 'admit impediments'. I believe this was him asking us to set aside prior convictions about love, to come to a higher understanding that he then continues on to explain. "love is not love Which alters when it alternation finds" is the next line, which I think addresses a great deal of opinion about love. When two people 'love' each other and are then faced with something like a long series of fights, or a hurtful act like cheating, they often find themselves no longer loving each other. When true love finds such alternations, it alters not, according to Shakespeare. This is key, because it cuts out most of the 'non' true lovers out there.
In the rest of the poem, love is described as being the "star to every wandering bark" which is a great way of saying, love can take you from feeling lost to feeling that you are always where you need to be. Love is also described as transcending time, and even escaping death in the line, "within his bending sickle's compass come; love alters not with his brief hours and weeks..."
Something as incredible and confusing as love is difficult to capture in a poem, let alone a sonnet. Many poets have tried to do so in many different forms, yet not many come close to how love is described in sonnet 116. I really enjoy this sonnet, and couldn't wish for a better way to describe the complex nature of true love.
great, well-said.
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