Sonnet 116. My father would often read this out aloud to me--when he was home from work and frustrated with his "education minister."

Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

By William Shakespeare

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45106/sonnet-116-let-me-not-to-the-marriage-of-true-minds

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-fixèd mark

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.

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.

Copyright Credit: William Shakespeare. "Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds" from SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS. London: G. Eld for T. T. and sold by William Aspley, 1609.