This sonnet is a good example of the limitlessness of love.
“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds” (2). Nothing can affect or change love in any way. Being in love is to some degree so sincere, can be both perfect and imperfect at the same time. Things occurs along in life that can take the importance of love away from us, but Shakespeare was trying to represent the simplest element that this can’t be done.
When love is true, when it’s real and deep, it can’t be changed. Shakespeare uses similes a lot throughout this sonnet to show this fact. “Love’s not time’s fool” (12) is an example of this. Time is love’s worst adversary. Love is always stronger than time. When you fall in love with someone you feel like you want to stop the clockwise, each moment you spend with your beloved one is priceless and memorable. This may seem corny to many people, but to those who have felt love, it is the most amazing thing that exists.
This is what Shakespeare was trying to portray. Love is something that is so great and powerful, that it can’t be measured. Shakespeare believes that his definition of love is true. “If this be error and upon me proved,” (13). He assumes that if his argument about love is proven to be wrong, then no man has ever loved. Just how secure the poet is in his standards of friendship and love, which he hopes that he and the youth can achieve, is evident in this concluding couplet; he stakes his own poetry as his wager that love is all he has described it to be.
