What does William Shakespeare mean by "Let me not to the marriage of true minds"?

Question

I am very confused as to what he meant by this particular line in Sonnet 116. Can anyone help please!

Answer 1

The phrase "true minds" suggests an elevated rather than physical love. With a love of this kind, no obstacles should interfere. A marriage of true minds should withstand any storm, including the ravages of time. This type of love is unchanging, an "ever fixed mark". Unlike other loves that could be tossed about by tempests and destroyed, this love is solid, like the star that guides the lost at sea (every wandering bark). Because it is not a lust or a body driven love, the usual mortal complaints don't apply. Time may ravage the body, affecting such external qualities like the rosiness of lips and cheeks, but a marriage between true minds--that is true, exalted love--will continue despite the ravages of time. And this is what it means to love.

Answer 2

It's easier to understand if you look at the entire sentence:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments.

"The marriage of true minds" is love, and "impediments" are obstacles.  The author means something like,

"I will not allow any obstacles to true love."

Imagine that the author has just praised his lover's beauty: her sparkling eyes, her rosy cheeks, her auburn hair etc., and that his lover says, "Oh yeah, you love me now.  But what about when I'm wrinkly and gray?"

This poem is a response: the author says their love is a "marriage of true minds," and to such a love he can admit no impediment, certainly not anything so trifling as the passage of time.  His lover may grow old and lose her physical beauty, but that cannot impede a marriage of minds:

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 death of doom.

Answer 3

http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/sh...