Kathleen Marie T.

Hornales Master of Arts in Literature

Saturday 3:00 – 6:00 pm Dr. Lito Diones

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, nor no man ever loved.

Sonnet 18

William Shakespeare

“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And too often is his gold complexion dimm'd:
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or natures changing course untrimm'd;
By thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.”
 Sonnet 40

William Shakespeare

Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all;

What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more.
Then, if for my love, thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest;
But yet be blam'd, if thou thy self deceivest
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty:
And yet, love knows it is a greater grief
To bear love's wrong, than hate's known injury.
   Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
   Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes.

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Analysis

No word in this world that is more romantic than love. Love can make people happy.
They say love makes the world go round and that, it is so magical. Its power is so strong that
people can’t explain their feelings nor describe it and even one thousand words are not enough to
say what they feel. As the cliché goes “Love is like a mystery, full of mystery.”
In today’s generation, most people especially teenagers usually confuse love with
infatuation. They might probably say that it is love at first sight or that person is the right man for
them because there is a spark between the two of them like some fairy tale movies we watch. It
really depends on a person because we, humans, have really different notions when it comes to
love. As for me, I don’t believe in love at first sight. We can’t feel love with just a blink of our
eye or a snap on our finger. It’s not an instant noodle that once you put a hot water, after few
minutes, it is good to eat. I always believe that love takes time - time to know and time to grow.
It is like a rose. You need to plant it, water it and cultivate it for its bud to grow. It really takes
time. Sometimes, you will become impatient or get tired of waiting for it to bloom. You even
wanted to give up for it seems hopeless. But with the right amount of nurture, never living it a
bad weather may came or disaster, it will blossom just like what Shakespeare said in one of his
poem “O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken;” And if you
will continue to nurture it, it will never wither nor die.