Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

2202242  Introduction to the Study of English Poetry

 

 

Assignment 4 Discussion

 

General Comments:

 

Read the poem carefully and answer the following questions.  Make sure that your answer is based on the poem.

 

 

Sonnet 116

(1609)

William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)

 

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 5
That looks on tempests 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; 10
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 prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

 

Sonnet CXVI Notes

 

 

1.  (2 points)  What is the quality of love considered to be as the poet defines it in the first quatrain?

 

Comments: 

 

 

2.  (3 points)  Explain the image of the star in the second quatrain.

 

Comments: 

 

 

3.  (2 points)  Scan lines 9-10.  Also mark the bar division.  Name the prevailing foot and the number of feet in each line.

 

Love's not | Time's fool, | though ro | sy lips | and cheeks iambic pentameter
Within | his bend | ing sic | kle's com | pass come; iambic pentameter

 

Comments: 

 

 

4.  (3 points)  Paraphrase the last four lines of the poem.

 

Comments: 

 

 

Links

 

 

William Shakespeare

 

 

 

 

Some books on Shakespeare at Chula

 

Other critical writings on Shakespeare


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Last updated February 14, 2008