TWO LOVE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE

          TWO LOVE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE

Let us on this Valentine ’s Day have a look at two most inspiring love sonnets of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), who was a poet and dramatist not only of England but of the whole world.  Though his writings were for his own times, they happened to become the immortal treasure of all ages to come.   He had the divine faculty of representing the thoughts and feelings of entire humanity. This makes him relevant to every country and every period of world’s history.   

Here are the two sonnets:

                        (1)

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 tempest and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring 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.  

                       

(2)

TO me, fair friend, you never can be old;

For as you were when first your eye I eyed,

Such seems your beauty still. Three Winters cold

Have from the forests shook three Summers’ pride;

Three beauteous Springs to yellow Autumn turn’d

In process of the seasons have I seen,

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d,

Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green,

Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;

So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,

Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived:

For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:

Ere you were born was beauty’s Summer dead.

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14^th February 2020                               G. R. KANWAL