Let me not to the marriage of true
Admit impediments.
Love is not
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed
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
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.
The
It is the star to every wandering barkis a reference to a barque which was a three masted sailing ship and to the fact that early navigation was primarily done with reference to the stars in the night sky.