Sonnet 116 epitomizes why Shakespeare is my religion. Other books inspirit us to love, but what is love? This amazing Sonnet, perhaps Shakespeare’s greatest, describes the constancy, depth and beauty of love, and how true love may extend its arc over the length of a entire life. This one I dedicate to Mary, whose birthday is this weekend.  

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.

–William Shakespeare