Of course, human love can be a fickle thing. It is a guiding star, a fixed mark, a thing of immeasurable worth because of its sureness. Though storms beat against two people, though time may change them, though trials unknown when they first made their vows may come, that love endures, for it is based on promise, not fickle feelings. Those promises are the center of what binds two people together. Donne and Shakespeare point back to the same thing when they envision love as an “ever-fixed mark” or the foot of a compass. No, that love, that marriage bond, is faithfulness embodied. What sort of love, or faithfulness, is that? We should Also not cease to love when the one whom we love is not in our presence. But love is not meant for the fainthearted, or for him who turns back once he has begun. We will grow old, we will fade, we may even change our tastes. Why should I, once I am married to him that I have truly connected myself to, seek to find a reason for separation? Love is not love which ceases to love when the other half changes. Here, we speak on those, and ourselves, who are already joined. But let us say, perhaps, that we are the speaker rather than Shakespeare. Why should he seek to impede those who desire true union? Least of all his own. Otherwise, it is not love.įirst, Shakespeare addresses the beginning of love. Yes, people and circumstances will change, but the ties that bind must not be broken once God has bound them. Love should not be a fickle thing, not true love. Yet I find this one to be rather sweet, in a philosophic way. Most feel like a backhanded compliment than a love poem. Shakespeare has a number of tongue-in-cheek poems out there, many of which make me laugh rather than sigh. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,īut bears it out even to the edge of doom. Within his bending sickle’s compass come Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
That looks on tempests and is never shaken
0 kommentar(er)
