life's changing circumstances or temptations, it stays the course. Although time will affect the appearance of a lover, that does not change the quality of love. Shakespeare staked his ability to write on the truthfulness of this definition:

If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

LITERARY DEVICE:

When you analyze poetry, you should think about the speaker, audience, purpose, and style of the poem. This means considering literary devices. It seems that the audience is vague, and Shakespeare himself is the speaker. His purpose may be self-exploration and therefore determination of what it means to be in love. As far as devices he used we see personification at work for both Love and Time:

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering 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:

Here love was given the ability to look, and later to have the appearance of "rosy lips and cheeks". This certainly demonstrates a sign of life which is a further level of personifcation.

In the 3rd and 4th lines, Shakespeare uses word play and repetition and parallel structure with the words:

Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:

This affects the reader because he/she has to think of a word being used as different parts of speech than it was previously used in the sentence. It feels clever.

Shakespeare is certainly a master when it comes to expression.

Sonnet CXVI (116) by Shakespeare is a succinct and beautiful expression of the speaker's concept of true love. In the context of the previous sonnets, the speaker puts aside his uncertainties and apologies, instead concentrating on love as an ideal.

True love is qualified by its constancy. Man or nature never alter it; instead, it is an "ever-fixed mark" that no disaster can affect. Even Time cannot alter such love. The beloved may age or suffer misfortune, but the feeling of love for this person does not change. Comparing true love to the North Star that is an "ever-fixed mark" (line 5), the speaker declares that love is not "Time's fool" (line 9) despite the beloved's aging and loss of beauty. So convinced is the speaker of the permanence of true love that in the closing couplet he declares that "If this be error" to believe as he does about true love, "no man ever loved" (line 14).

Shakespeare employs metaphors, writing that love is an "ever-fixed mark"(line 5) and "Love's not Time's Fool." (line 9)  Previously, Love has been equated metaphorically to a navigating device that operates as does the North Star--"the star to every wandering bark." (line 7) Imagery is used with the suggestion of the Grim Reaper and his "bending sickle" (lines 9-10). 

In this particular sonnet, simple language and structure are employed. Many of the words are monosyllabic; there is nothing remarkable about the rhyme, either. It is, perhaps, the most conversational of Shakespeare's sonnets. Furthermore, because it imitates ordinary speech, the impact of this sonnet's meaning is easily felt and understood.

In this sonnet, the speaker expresses his faith in the bond between two people who truly love one another. Lines 2-4 draw a distinction between couples who "admit impediments" to their relationship, allowing distraction or change to enter the relationship and knock it off course, so to speak. To the speaker, it is not love when these obstacles are allowed to interfere.

The speaker goes on to describe what love is; it never wavers. He compares it to a permanent mark that storms cannot affect or a star that is a reliable point of navigation for a ship at sea.

To the speaker, love is not temporary and wouldn't be abandoned because of the ravages of time. The speaker's final assertion in the concluding couplet is that if love is not the way he has exalted it, then no one ever truly loved and he never wrote about it. His certainty is absolute.