A Valentine's Day sonnet for Mom and Dad

Valentine's Day. A day when romantic love is celebrated in the western world. Or alternatively, a commercial opportunity to capitalise on emotions through the giving of soppy cards and overpriced roses. Whichever way you look at it, any celebration of love is a good thing, although, as Father says, every day is Valentine's Day.
He should know. It is my mother's birthday, and today she is 85. Next week they will have been married for 63 years and I think we are still waiting for the first fight. If there have been any, they have certainly been successfully hidden from us!

The sonnets of Shakespeare spring first to mind when thoughts turn to romantic notions and possibly one of the best known is number 116 from the quill of this prolific literary genius. To put you out of your misery as you wrack your brains to remember these few lines, which, when we were at school, doubtless seemed incomprehensible and archaic, I quote it hereunder. You will notice that today's English has become boring and dumbed down to a primary school level in comparison with the descriptive language of the 1600s. Sad times!

Anyway, this one is for Mom and Dad!

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-fixed mark,

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;

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.