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 prov’d,
  I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

CXVII

Accuse me thus:  that I have scanted all,
Wherein I should your great deserts repay,
Forgot upon your dearest love to call,
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;
That I have frequent been with unknown minds,
And given to time your own dear-purchas’d right;
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds
Which should transport me farthest from your sight. 
Book both my wilfulness and errors down,
And on just proof surmise, accumulate;
Bring me within the level of your frown,
But shoot not at me in your waken’d hate;
  Since my appeal says I did strive to prove
  The constancy and virtue of your love.

CXVIII

Like as, to make our appetite more keen,
With eager compounds we our palate urge;
As, to prevent our maladies unseen,
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge;
Even so, being full of your ne’er-cloying sweetness,
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;
And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness
To be diseas’d, ere that there was true needing. 
Thus policy in love, to anticipate
The ills that were not, grew to faults assur’d,
And brought to medicine a healthful state
Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cur’d;
  But thence I learn and find the lesson true,
  Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.

CXIX

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,
Distill’d from limbecks foul as hell within,
Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,
Still losing when I saw myself to win! 
What wretched errors hath my heart committed,
Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never! 
How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted,
In the distraction of this madding fever! 
O benefit of ill! now I find true
That better is, by evil still made better;
And ruin’d love, when it is built anew,
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. 
  So I return rebuk’d to my content,
  And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.

CXX