Sonnet 116 | ISC Class 11 English Notes

This note covers William Shakespeare and the sonnet form, the speaker and situation, a quatrain-by-quatrain summary, close reading of the fixed mark, the guiding star and Time's sickle, the closing couplet, poetic devices, rhyme and metre, themes, tone, key quotations and vocabulary.

Who wrote the poem, and what kind of poem is it?

About William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright who lived from 1564 to 1616. Alongside his plays, he wrote a numbered sequence of sonnets. This poem is number 116 in that sequence, and it is known by that number rather than by a title of its own.

What kind of poem is it?

A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem with a fixed pattern of rhyme. This one is built from three quatrains, groups of four lines with alternating rhymes, and a closing couplet, a pair of rhyming lines. This arrangement is known as the Shakespearean or English sonnet.

It is also a lyric, a short poem in which a single voice expresses thought and feeling. Rather than telling a story, it builds an argument about what true love is, moving through definition, comparison and a closing challenge.

Who is the speaker, and what is the situation?

The speaker is the voice of the poem. It uses “me” in lines 1 and 13 and “I” in line 14, and nowhere else. No listener is named or addressed, and no place or time is described. The poem reads as a public declaration.

The situation is set by the first line. The speaker thinks of “the marriage of true minds”, a union between faithful minds, and refuses to accept any obstacle to it. The rest of the poem gives reasons for that refusal, and the couplet stakes the speaker's own writing on them.

The word true here means faithful and constant as well as genuine. The marriage the poem describes is a joining of minds, so it concerns loyalty and understanding rather than a ceremony, a home or physical beauty.

What is the summary of the poem, quatrain by quatrain?

The poem's argument moves in four stages that match its rhyme pattern: three quatrains and a couplet. Each stage approaches true love from a new direction.

Lines 1 to 4: love that refuses to change

The speaker resolves never to admit impediments, or obstacles, to the marriage of true minds. A definition follows. Love is not love if it changes when it finds change, whether in the other person or in circumstances.

Nor is it love if it bends, or gives way, and departs when the remover departs. The remover can be read as a lover who moves away or as any force that takes love away. Either way, false love goes along with the loss.

Lines 5 to 8: love as a fixed guide

With the cry “O, no!” the speaker dismisses those false kinds of love and describes the true kind. Love is “an ever-fixed mark”, a permanent landmark that looks out on storms and is never shaken by them.

Love is also the star that guides every wandering ship. The height of that star can be measured, yet its worth is unknown.

Lines 9 to 12: love against Time

Love is not Time's fool, not a plaything that Time can mock or control. Time is pictured with a curved sickle, and youthful beauty, the “rosy lips and cheeks”, falls within its sweep. Beauty fades with the years, but love does not.

Love does not change with Time's brief hours and weeks. Instead, it endures right to the edge of doom, the end of the world itself.

Lines 13 and 14: the speaker's challenge

The couplet issues a challenge. If this account of love is mistaken and proved against the speaker, then the speaker never wrote and no man ever loved. Since the poem exists and people do love, the claim stands.

How does the argument build?

The stages move from a negative definition to positive images of steadiness, then to a contest with Time, and finally to a personal guarantee. In the text used here, the colon at the end of line 4 leads straight into the answering cry of line 5, while the full stops after lines 8 and 12 close the second and third stages. Editions differ in small points of punctuation, so these marks may vary in the anthology.

How does the first quatrain define love by what it is not?

A resolve that sounds like a vow

“Let me not” expresses a firm resolve, close in meaning to “may I never”. The speaker begins by refusing rather than explaining. The verb “Admit” is delayed until line 2, so the phrase “the marriage of true minds” comes first and holds attention before the refusal is completed.

Impediments are obstacles or hindrances. Set beside “marriage”, the word is often read as an echo of the marriage service of the Church of England, in which the couple were asked to confess any impediment, a lawful obstacle, to their union. The speaker answers that question for the marriage of minds: there is none to admit.

The verb admit carries two senses that both fit. It can mean to let something in, as a door admits a visitor, or to accept something as true. The speaker will neither allow obstacles into the union nor grant that any exist.

What does “Love is not love” mean?

“Love is not love” uses one word in two senses. The first “love” is what people commonly call love; the second is love in its true sense. The phrase strips the name from a false version while keeping it for the real thing, and it sets the test true love must pass: it must survive change.

What do “alters” and “bends” suggest?

A love that “alters when it alteration finds” is merely reactive. It notices a change and changes in return. The poem does not name the change, so the line covers any alteration. Such love depends on conditions staying the same, so it was never secure.

Bends suggests yielding under pressure, the way something weak or pliable gives way. True love, by contrast, must hold its shape whatever pressure is applied, and the next quatrain supplies images of exactly that firmness.

How do the images of the mark and the star work in lines 5 to 8?

The cry that turns the argument

“O, no!” rejects the false loves just described, and its two short words interrupt the steady movement of the verse. After it, the speaker stops saying what love is not and begins to say what it is.

Why is love an ever-fixed mark?

A mark here is a seamark, a fixed object such as a beacon or tower that sailors use to steer by. Calling love “an ever-fixed mark” stresses permanence twice over: “ever” means always, and “fixed” means firmly set in one place.

The mark “looks on tempests and is never shaken”. Tempests are violent storms, and they stand for the troubles that test any relationship. The mark does not avoid the storm. It looks straight at it and remains firm, so true love is shown facing difficulty rather than escaping it.

What does the star add?

Love is next “the star to every wandering bark”. A bark is a small sailing ship, and a wandering one is lost or drifting. The star gives it direction, so love becomes the fixed point by which an uncertain life can find its course.

The word “every” widens the claim: love guides all who have lost their way, not one couple alone. The star also stands high above the storm of line 6, steady while the sea below moves.

Measured height, unknown worth

Line 8 adds a contrast: “Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.” Sailors measured a star's height, its angle above the horizon, to work out their position at sea. In older English “his” could mean “its”, so “his height” is the star's height.

The star can be measured and used, yet its true value remains unknown. Love likewise can be relied on and steered by without ever being fully valued or explained.

How does the third quatrain set love against Time?

Time as a reaper with a sickle

Line 9 opens with a flat denial: “Love’s not Time’s fool”. A fool here is a plaything or dupe, someone made sport of by a more powerful figure. Love is not at Time's mercy in that way.

Time carries a “bending sickle”, a curved blade for cutting crops. Time was traditionally pictured as a reaper holding such a blade, cutting down living things as a harvester cuts grain. The word “bending” describes both the curve of the blade and the sweep of its stroke.

What falls within the sickle's compass?

The “rosy lips and cheeks” stand for youthful beauty and health. They come within the sickle's compass, its range or sweep, so beauty is within Time's reach and will be cut down.

The word “though” carries the argument. Love is not Time's fool even though beauty falls to Time. Love that depended on rosy lips and cheeks would fade with them; true love does not.

Brief hours and the edge of doom

Line 11 returns to the verb of line 3: “Love alters not”. Time's “brief hours and weeks” are small, passing units, and the adjective “brief” makes Time's measure seem slight beside love.

Love “bears it out”, meaning endures or holds out, “even to the edge of doom”. Doom here means the Day of Judgement, the end of the world in Christian belief. Love lasts to the very limit of time itself, so Time's sickle finds nothing in love to cut.

How does the couplet close the argument?

A challenge staked on the poem itself

The couplet opens with a condition: “If this be error and upon me prov’d”. Error means a mistake, and “upon me prov’d” means proved against the speaker. The phrasing sounds like a formal dispute in which a claim is tested.

The result follows in line 14: “I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.” Writ is an older form of “wrote”. Both results are plainly untrue, since the poem itself has been written and people have loved. The condition therefore cannot hold, and the definition of love stands.

How do the negatives strengthen the close?

“nor no man” places two negatives together. In the English of Shakespeare's time, a double negative of this kind strengthened a denial rather than cancelling it. With “never” earlier in the line, the closing words gather three negatives to sound as absolute as possible.

Is the ending certain or playful?

The couplet can be read as complete confidence: the speaker would stake everything ever written on this definition. It can also be read as a clever move, since no one could prove that a writer who has just finished a poem never wrote. Both readings agree that the speaker will not entertain doubt.

Which poetic devices does the poem use?

A poetic device is a technique of language used for effect. In this sonnet the devices share one purpose: to make constancy feel solid and change feel weak. The table gives each device with its line and effect.

How does negation work as a method?

The poem relies heavily on negation, the use of negative words. The word “not” appears in lines 1, 2, 9 and 11; “no” in lines 5 and 14; “never” in lines 6 and 14; and “nor” in line 14. True love is defined largely by what it refuses to do: alter, bend, be shaken or be fooled.

This method suits the subject. Constancy is hard to show directly, because it means that nothing happens to the thing that lasts. By naming every change that love resists, the speaker makes its steadiness visible.

Where do caesura and enjambment shape the reading?

A caesura is a strong pause within a line. In this text, line 2 breaks with a full stop after “impediments”, ending the opening refusal and starting the definition in the same line. Line 5 pauses after “O, no!”, and line 9 after “Time’s fool”, each pause giving weight to a denial.

Enjambment is the running of a sentence over a line break without a pause. Lines 1 and 2 hold back “Admit impediments” until the second line, so the refusal lands with force. Lines 9 and 10 carry “rosy lips and cheeks” forward into the sickle's reach, as if beauty were being drawn towards the blade.

How does contrast add force?

The poem sets contrasts against each other: fixed and wandering, measured height and unknown worth, brief hours and the edge of doom. Each pair sets love's permanence against something passing.

How do rhyme and metre shape the sonnet?

What is the rhyme scheme?

A rhyme scheme records the pattern of line-ending sounds with letters. Here it is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG: each quatrain has its own pair of alternating rhymes, and the couplet adds a final new rhyme.

Three pairs do not rhyme exactly in present-day pronunciation: love and remove, come and doom, and prov’d and lov’d. Love and remove, like prov’d and lov’d, look alike on the page, which is called an eye rhyme. Come and doom share only the final consonant, a half rhyme.

Shaken and taken, by contrast, rhyme fully on two syllables, with the stress on the first. This feminine rhyme gives lines 6 and 8 a soft, falling close that sets them apart from the single-syllable rhymes around them.

What is the metre?

Metre is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line. The poem is written in iambic pentameter: most lines have ten syllables arranged as five iambs, each an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, as in “ad-MIT”.

Line 10 shows the pattern clearly when its stresses are marked: with-IN | his BEND | ing SICK | le’s COM | pass COME.

Where does the metre vary?

Lines 6 and 8 have eleven syllables, because of the extra unstressed syllable at the end of “shaken” and “taken”, a feminine ending. Line 5 has nine syllables if “fixed” is said as one syllable and ten if it is sounded as two, “fix-ed”.

A few lines, such as 7 and 12, fit the pattern only when some words are spoken with fewer syllables. In lines 13 and 14, the apostrophes in “prov’d” and “lov’d” show that the ending is not sounded as a separate syllable, so both lines keep exactly ten syllables.

How does the form support the meaning?

The three quatrains give three separate approaches, and the couplet, with its single rhyme, closes the case like a verdict. In this reading, the volta, or turn in thought, comes at line 13, though the cry of line 5 also turns the argument. From the middle of line 2 to line 12 the poem speaks of love in the third person, and the couplet brings back the first person of line 1 for a personal challenge. The steady pattern of the form itself mirrors a love that holds steady.

What themes and message does the poem develop?

A theme is a central idea that a work develops. This sonnet has one large subject, true love, approached through several connected themes.

Constancy as the test of love

Constancy means remaining the same, especially in loyalty. The poem makes it the defining mark of true love. Lines 2 to 4 reject love that alters or bends, and line 11 states that love “alters not”.

Love beyond the reach of Time and the body

The poem accepts mortality, the fact that living things age and die. Beauty falls within Time's sickle in lines 9 and 10. Yet the opening spoke of “true minds”, not bodies, so love and beauty follow different laws: beauty belongs to Time, while love lasts to the edge of doom.

Love as a guide whose worth cannot be measured

In lines 5 to 8, love steadies and directs those who are lost, yet its worth is unknown. The theme is love's value, which lies beyond any reckoning.

Certainty and the written word

The couplet links love with writing, since loving and writing stand side by side in line 14. The theme is the lasting power of words: a declaration of constant love is set down in a form that is itself fixed.

What is the message?

The message is that true love is an ideal of unchanging loyalty. It survives storms, change, departure and the loss of beauty, and it lasts until the end of time. The poem does not describe a particular couple living up to this ideal; it states what love must be to deserve the name.

What is the tone, and what is the speaker's attitude to love?

How does the tone begin?

Tone means the attitude conveyed by the speaking voice. The opening tone is firm and solemn. The refusal to “Admit impediments” sounds like a vow, and the definition that follows is stated as fact, without any word of doubt.

Where does feeling break through?

The tone rises to passion in line 5. “O, no!” is a cry rather than a statement, and it shows that the speaker cares deeply about the distinction being drawn.

How does the speaker treat loss?

In lines 9 and 10 the tone is calm and clear-eyed. The speaker admits without sorrow or lament that beauty will be cut down. This calm suggests that the speaker's confidence in love does not depend on denying the effects of Time.

How does the poem end?

The couplet is confident and even defiant. The speaker invites anyone to prove the definition wrong, while knowing that the proof is impossible. The attitude to love throughout is idealistic: love is presented as perfect constancy, and anything less is refused the name.

The speaker's attitude is also assertive. Its authority comes from sounding like a universal truth, which is why its statements are framed in the present tense: love “is”, love “alters not”.

Which key quotations support close-reading answers?

A close reading explains how particular words create meaning. A strong answer quotes briefly, places the quotation in its line, and explains its effect.

“the marriage of true minds”

Line 1. Shows the poem's subject. The word “marriage” brings the idea of a binding promise into a poem about feeling. Useful for questions on the opening.

“Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,”

Lines 2 and 3. Shows the negative definition at work: change itself becomes the enemy of love. Useful for questions on constancy and word choice.

“an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;”

Lines 5 and 6. Shows love meeting trouble without moving. The present tense of “looks” makes the mark's steadiness continuous rather than a single brave moment. Useful for questions on imagery.

“Love’s not Time’s fool”

Line 9. Shows love resisting Time. “Time” carries a capital in mid-line, marking it as a figure, and Love is set against it as a rival; “Love’s” here is short for “Love is”. Useful for questions on personification and mortality.

“But bears it out even to the edge of doom.”

Line 12. Shows endurance to the end of the world. The verb “bears” suggests carrying a weight, so love lasts through strain rather than without effort. Useful for questions on the theme of time.

“If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.”

Lines 13 and 14. Shows the speaker's certainty. The only “If” in the poem introduces a doubt purely in order to dismiss it. Useful for questions on the ending, tone and argument.

Glossary

• Impediments: Obstacles or hindrances; in line 2 the speaker refuses to admit any obstacle to the union of true minds.
• Remover: One who removes or moves away; false love departs when the remover departs.
• Mark: A seamark, a fixed object such as a beacon or tower that sailors use as a guide.
• Tempests: Violent storms; they stand for the troubles and trials that true love faces without moving.
• Bark: A small sailing ship; the “wandering bark” is a ship that is lost or drifting.
• Height be taken: Be measured for height; sailors measured a star's angle above the horizon to find their position.
• Fool: A plaything or dupe of someone more powerful; love is not something Time can mock.
• Sickle: A curved blade for cutting crops, carried by Time in the poem's image of reaping.
• Compass: Range or reach; youthful beauty comes within the sweep of Time's curved blade.
• Bears it out: Endures or holds out to the end, describing love's survival through all of Time.
• Doom: The Day of Judgement, the end of the world; “the edge of doom” is the very limit of time.
• Writ: An older form of “wrote”, used in line 14 for the speaker's own writing.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: The poem describes a wedding between two named lovers. Correct: It speaks of a “marriage of true minds”, a union of faithful minds, and names no couple and no ceremony.
• Misconception: The speaker addresses a beloved throughout the poem. Correct: No listener is addressed; the poem is a general declaration, with “me” and “I” only at the start and close.
• Misconception: The poem claims that true love never meets difficulty. Correct: The fixed mark “looks on tempests”; love faces storms but is not shaken by them.
• Misconception: The poem says that beauty lasts for ever. Correct: It accepts that “rosy lips and cheeks” fall within Time's sickle; only love is said to endure.
• Misconception: “Love’s not Time’s fool” means that love is foolish. Correct: It means love is not Time's plaything; Time cannot make sport of it or control it.
• Misconception: Every end-word pair is a perfect modern rhyme. Correct: Love and remove, come and doom, and prov’d and lov’d do not rhyme exactly in present-day pronunciation.
• Misconception: The double negative “nor no man” cancels itself out. Correct: Here the two negatives strengthen the denial, as they could in the English of Shakespeare's time.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. Read the extract: “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:” (a) What does the speaker refuse to admit, and to what? [1] (b) Explain “Love is not love” in the context of lines 2 to 4. [2] (c) Name the device in “alters” and “alteration”, “remover” and “remove”, explain its effect, and explain what “bends” suggests about false love. [3] [6 marks]

1. (a) The speaker refuses to admit impediments, or obstacles, to the marriage of true minds, a union of faithful minds.
2. (b) The first “love” is what people commonly call love and the second means true love, so the phrase denies the name to a false version.
3. (b) That false version changes when it finds change, or departs when the remover departs.
4. (c) The device is polyptoton, the repetition of a word in different grammatical forms.
5. (c) It makes false love sound like an echo: change answers change and removal answers removal, so such love merely copies circumstances.
6. (c) The word “bends” suggests yielding under pressure, so false love gives way instead of holding firm when tested.

Q2. “It is the star to every wandering bark, / Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.” Sailors measured a star's height, its angle above the horizon, to find their position, and “his” here means “its”; “It” is love, and a bark is a small sailing ship. Explain the metaphor in line 7 and the contrast in line 8. [3 marks]

1. Line 7 is a metaphor that makes love the star by which a wandering bark, a lost or drifting ship, finds its course.
2. The word “every” extends love's guidance to all who are lost, so love is a universal guide rather than a private feeling.
3. Line 8 contrasts the star's measurable height with its unknown worth: love can be relied on, yet its true value lies beyond measurement.

Q3. “Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks / Within his bending sickle’s compass come;” Time is pictured here holding a sickle, a curved blade for cutting crops, and “compass” means range or reach. Explain (i) “Time’s fool”, (ii) the personification of Time, (iii) what “rosy lips and cheeks” stand for, and (iv) the force of “though”. [4 marks]

1. (i) A fool is a plaything or dupe, so Time cannot mock, control or make sport of love.
2. (ii) Time is personified as a reaper with the pronoun “his” and a sickle, a figure who cuts down living things as a harvester cuts grain.
3. (iii) The “rosy lips and cheeks” stand for youthful beauty and health, which come within the reach of Time's blade and will fade.
4. (iv) The word “though” concedes that beauty falls to Time while denying that love does, so love is separated from the body.

Q4. In lines 5 and 6, love is called “an ever-fixed mark, / That looks on tempests and is never shaken;”. A mark here is a seamark, a fixed object such as a beacon that guides sailors. State two qualities of true love that this image suggests. [2 marks]

1. Permanence: “ever-fixed” presents love as always firmly in place, so it does not move or change with circumstances.
2. Steadiness under trouble: the mark looks on tempests, or storms, without being shaken, so true love faces difficulty without giving way.

Q5. The end words of the fourteen lines, in order, are: minds, love, finds, remove, mark, shaken, bark, taken, cheeks, come, weeks, doom, prov’d, lov’d. Give the rhyme scheme, name the sonnet form it shows, and comment on two pairs that are not exact rhymes in present-day pronunciation. [4 marks]

1. The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG: minds and finds, love and remove, mark and bark, shaken and taken, cheeks and weeks, come and doom, prov’d and lov’d.
2. Three alternately rhymed quatrains and a final couplet show the Shakespearean, or English, sonnet form.
3. Love and remove do not rhyme exactly in present-day pronunciation; they look alike on the page, so they form an eye rhyme.
4. Come and doom share only the final consonant sound, so they form a half rhyme rather than a full rhyme.

Q6. Outline of the poem: the speaker admits no impediments to the marriage of true minds (lines 1 and 2); rejects love that alters or bends with the remover (lines 2 to 4); calls love an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken (lines 5 and 6) and the star to every wandering bark, whose worth is unknown though its height is taken (lines 7 and 8); says love is not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks fall within his sickle's compass (lines 9 and 10); says love does not alter with brief hours and weeks but bears it out to the edge of doom (lines 11 and 12); and stakes the speaker's writing on the claim (lines 13 and 14). Discuss, in eight points, how the poem develops its idea of true love. [8 marks]

1. The opening refusal to admit impediments sets the subject, a union of faithful minds, and the speaker's firm, vow-like stance.
2. Love that alters when it finds alteration is rejected, so constancy becomes the test of true love.
3. Love that bends with the remover gives way when the other departs; rejecting it, the speaker requires love to hold firm under pressure.
4. The ever-fixed mark turns the definition positive: love faces tempests, or storms, without being shaken, rather than escaping trouble.
5. The star guiding every wandering bark makes love a guide for all who are lost, while its unknown worth places love's value beyond measurement.
6. The contrast with Time accepts that rosy lips and cheeks, youthful beauty, fall within the sickle's compass, yet denies that love is Time's fool.
7. Love's refusal to alter with brief hours and weeks, and its endurance to the edge of doom, extend constancy to the end of time.
8. The couplet stakes the speaker's writing on the definition; since the poem exists, the challenge cannot succeed, and the argument ends in confidence.

Q7. The speaker's tone moves through a firm refusal to admit impediments in lines 1 and 2, the cry “O, no!” in line 5, a calm statement in lines 9 and 10 that rosy lips and cheeks fall within Time's sickle, and a confident challenge in lines 13 and 14 that stakes the speaker's writing on the claim. Describe how the tone develops, and give a reasoned personal response on whether the speaker's ideal of love is convincing. [5 marks]

1. The opening tone is firm and solemn: the refusal to admit impediments sounds like a vow and is stated without doubt.
2. The cry “O, no!” brings a burst of passion, showing how strongly the speaker feels the difference between false and true love.
3. Lines 9 and 10 are calm and clear-eyed: the speaker accepts the loss of beauty without lament, so the confidence in love seems considered rather than naive.
4. The couplet is confident and defiant, inviting proof of error while resting on results that are plainly impossible.
5. Personal response: the ideal convinces as a statement of what love should be, because it admits that beauty falls to Time, though it does not claim to describe every real relationship.

Key takeaways

• Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare is a Shakespearean sonnet of three quatrains and a couplet that defines true love as unchanging constancy.
• The first quatrain defines love negatively: love that alters when it finds alteration, or bends with the remover to remove, is not love.
• The ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and the star guiding every wandering bark make love a steady guide whose worth stays unknown.
• Time is personified as a reaper whose sickle cuts down youthful beauty, yet love is not Time's fool and lasts to the edge of doom.
• The couplet stakes the speaker's writing on the definition; because the poem plainly exists, the challenge confirms the claim.
• Negation, metaphor, personification, polyptoton and enjambment work together to make constancy feel solid and change feel weak.
• The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG and the metre iambic pentameter, with feminine endings in lines 6 and 8 and some inexact modern rhymes.

Test yourself

What does “impediments” mean in line 2?

Obstacles or hindrances. The speaker refuses to admit any obstacle to the marriage of true minds.

What two senses of “love” appear in “Love is not love”?

The first is what people commonly call love; the second is true love, which does not alter when it finds alteration.

What is the ever-fixed mark?

A seamark, a fixed object such as a beacon that guides sailors, standing for love's permanence in the face of storms.

What does “Love’s not Time’s fool” mean?

Love is not Time's plaything. Time cannot mock or control it, even though youthful beauty falls to Time's sickle.

Which device appears in “alters” and “alteration”?

Polyptoton, the repetition of a word in different grammatical forms, which makes false love sound like an echo of circumstances.

Why does the couplet's challenge succeed?

Its results, that the speaker never wrote and no man ever loved, are plainly false, so the definition of love stands.