Sonnets From Dante to the Present

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. Oh 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. October Helen Hunt Jackson Bending above the spicy woods which blaze, Arch skies so blue they flash, and hold the sun Immeasurably far; the waters run Too slow, so freighted are the river-ways With gold of elms and birches from the maze Of forests. Chestnuts, clicking one by one, Escape from satin burs; her fringes done, The gentian spreads them out in sunny days, And, like late revelers at dawn, the chance Of one sweet, mad, last hour, all things assail, And conquering, flush and spin; while, to enhance The spell, by sunset door, wrapped in a veil Of red and purple mists, the summer, pale, Steals back alone for one more song and dance.Hollander, John is the author of 'Sonnets From Dante to the Present', published 2001 under ISBN 9780375411779 and ISBN 0375411771.