Human emotions and sentiments are not permanent as they undergo frequent changes. Human nature is fickle according to the poet. The poet personifies love and makes it the subject in the poem. He presents love as an eternal being who does not change according to the change in situations. The poem highlights the qualities of love as being constant. Human love is not constant. As we know young people get attracted to each other on the basis of beauty, money and other parameters. Once these are lost their love diminishes. This is not true love. On the contrary true love is unchanging under all circumstances. That is why the poet has not involved any human agent and chosen love as the subject or doer of actions in the poem.

Bark: Ship

Compass: Range of time

By these words, the poet challenges that if he is wrong about these thoughts on love and can be proven wrong, then he disown all that he has ever written, and no man has ever truly loved in the worldThese words of the poet show the force of his conviction.

These lines serve as an affirmation to the reality of everlasting love which poet has been speaking about, in the poem.

(a) Compass represents time. These lines depict love as immortal. It does not fade with time, although time is like a sickle which has the power to destroy the physical beauty of a lover. Love is eternal. It does not change with the passing of time, but lasts until Doomsday.

(b) Poet says that true love is not at the mercy of time. It is ageless and eternal. True love grows with the age. The constancy of love holds two people in a relationship together.

Mainly there are two types of sonnets. One is English or Shakespearean sonnet and the other one is Italian sonnet. The given poem is a Shakespearean sonnet. Let’s now look at the poem given below:

She ruled in beauty o'er this heart of mine,

A noble lady in a humble home,

And now her time for heavenly bliss has come,

'Tis I am mortal proved, and she divine.

The soul that all its blessings must resign,

And love whose light no more on Earth finds room,

Might rend the rocks with pity for their doom,

Yet none their sorrows can in words enshrine;

They weep within my heart; and ears are deaf

Save mine alone, and I am crushed with care,

And naught remains to me save mournful breath.

Assuredly but dust and shade we are,

Assuredly desire is blind and brief,

Assuredly it's hope but ends in death.

Italian sonnet is also called Petrarchan sonnet. Petrarchan sonnet is named after a 14th century Italian poet named Francesco Petrarch. The Petrarchan sonnet has two stanzas: the octave and the sestet. The octave consists of the first eight lines and sestet consists of last six line. Octave follows the rhyme scheme abbaabba. Sestet usually follows the cdecde or cdcdcd rhyme scheme.

A sonnet is a one-stanza, 14-line poem. It is written in iambic pentameter. The word sonnet is derived from the Italian word sonetto, which means ‘a little song’. Sonnet is a popular classical form that has been used by poets for centuries. The most common and simplest type is known as the Shakespearean sonnet, but there are several other types.

Characteristics of sonnet:

Fourteen lines: All sonnets have 14 lines written in one stanza which can be broken down into four sections called quatrains.

A strict rhyme scheme: The rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet, for example, is ABAB / CDCD / EFEF / GG (notice the four distinct sections in the rhyme scheme).

Written in iambic pentameter: Sonnets are written in iambic pentameter. It is a poetic meter with 10 beats per line made up of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables.

The poet has used multiple negatives in the poem to make his statement because he wants to highlight the positive aspects more firmly. We can understand it by the example of negative question tags. A negative question tag generally attracts the positive answer. The same way by highlighting what is not true love the poet brings home the characteristics of real loveIn the context of the poem, the poet has pointed out those negative events that are believed to be love by ordinary people. For example, a young man falls in love with a beautiful girl at first sight. But Shakespeare corrects this notion by saying mere physical attraction is not love. Even if a person loses physical beauty by old age, sickness or accident, still love does not diminish. The poet emphasises the fact that love is not limited to physical, or worldly boundaries such as physical beauty. According to the poet love is eternal and goes beyond the boundaries of time.

Constancy is one of the main themes in the poem ‘Let me Not to the Marriage of True Minds’. Constancy makes any relationship eternal. The words, phrases and images Shakespeare has used in the poem to suggest the theme are:

a. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds…

b. Or bends with the remover to remove...

c. It is an ever-fixed mark..

d. That looks on tempests and is never shaken…

e. It is the star to every wandering bark…

f. Love's not Time's fool..

g. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks…