"It is the star to every wandering bark..."

July 25, 2009

"Sonnet 116"
(William Shakespeare)

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, not no man ever loved.

When Jeff and I were planning our wedding in the spring of 2009, we spent a lot of time with our wonderful pastor, talking about what we wanted to include in the ceremony that would best represent us. We had favorite hymns and had selected Bible verses, but I kept coming back to my desire to include a Shakespeare sonnet. Not only had Jeff and I met at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, but I also had "Sonnet 116" in mind already--one that so beautifully expressed what lasting love really is. Finally, we decided to include it, and my brother read it beautifully on July 25, 2009, at our wedding ceremony.

On that day, I thought we'd been through a lot. We'd faced difficult friendships, wrestled with financial concerns, made compromises as we learned what it was to be part of another family, and dealt with the disappointment of not getting jobs we so desperately wanted. As a result, when Ret read the sonnet, I proudly thought, "yes--our love has stood up to some tempests and will endure." It's not so much that I was wrong then but more that I was, perhaps, a bit naive. As my mum and dad would say, there were "rooms of life" back then that I just hadn't walked in yet--that I couldn't possibly imagine ever walking into, if I'm honest. 

Every spring, my freshmen present sonnets to the class, and we always include "Sonnet 116" in the packet. One of their tasks is to state the sonnet's central idea--to explain its meaning in a concise, clear sentence. This year, two of my favorites describing "our" sonnet were these:

"True love is pure and reliable. It is consistent."

"Love is something that will not waver under pressure."

Very little in our last 21 months has been consistent. Very little has been reliable. And the pressure has been constant. And yet, today, as I listened to my student explain the sonnet to her classmates, I was overwhelmed with gratitude as I realized that our love is pure. And reliable. And consistent. And unwavering. It has not bent or altered or shaken, even in the face of grief and trauma we never could have imagined. It has not changed with the passage of Time or been cut down by challenges.

One of my students described the speaker's tone in the final couplet as "smug." She noted how the speaker seems over-confident in what he's stating--so confident, in fact, that he's willing to wager that he's not a writer and men can't fall in love if what he says isn't true. And to that I say, "well played, sir."

There is no error in Shakespeare's words, if the love is steadfast and true. How blest I am to be part of a marriage bound together with that kind of love.