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Sonnet 116

William Shakespeare · 1609

Catalog grade guidance: 9–12

14 content lines · 116 words · Est. recitation about 1 min 3 sec (approx.)

Public-domain text for reading and recitation practice. Source: Project Gutenberg #1041: Shakespeare's Sonnets.Estimated time uses ~120 words/minute plus short pauses—not a contest rule.

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.