"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" and "Sonnet 116" are two of the most beautiful poems written on the subject of true love. Firstly, it is important to install boundaries on what true love is as defined by most conventional ideals. True love is the meeting of like minds; where the love of two people is eternal regardless of the way in which one changes, physically or mentally, over time. Love is to give yourself wholly and completely to another person. It is the idea of soul mates. Shakespeare and Donne both express these conventions in their poems. They both speak of a love that is eternal and unchanging. Shakespeare says, "Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,/But bears it out even to the edge of doom" (11-12). He believes that love does vary due to time; it stays constant even until death. Donne states that true love is the union of two souls: "Our two soules therefore, which are one..."(21). He constantly compares their love as the joining of two people in to o!
             ne whole being. Both poets see love as an eternal connection, they also express that the passion of the mind contributes to the success of two lovers.
             Both Shakespeare and Donne are very confident that physical attraction or "lust' is not sufficient to keep two people together forever. They must both have like minds to be a successful couple. Both poets make reference to an undying love, where the yearning for one another does not fade when the passion of the body subsides. Shakespeare says that "...is an ever-fixed mark" (5). It does not alter over time or end once the initial physical attraction has ceased. He also says that, "Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks/ Within his bending sickle's compass come" (9-10). Therefore, true love lasts past the glow and beauty of youthfulness and on to something much deeper and sacred. It moves on to the love of one&...