If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfather’d,
As subject to Time’s love or to Time’s hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather’d.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto th’ inviting time our fashion calls:
It fears not policy, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short-number’d hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.
To this I witness call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.
In plain English
If my love for you were just a creature of circumstance—born of luck and social standing—then it could be torn apart by fortune's whims, knocked down by time's favor or spite. It would be tangled up with all the other weeds and flowers that time sweeps together and scatters.
But it's not like that. My love was built on something solid, something beyond accident. It doesn't get shaken by the glittering fashions of the moment, and it doesn't crumble under the weight of despair that pulls everyone else down. It ignores the cynical politics that treats everything as temporary, good only for a short lease.
Instead, my love stands alone and genuinely wise—unmoved by the world's heat or cold, unswayed by its seasons. I'll call the fools of time as witnesses: those people who waste their lives for temporary gain, then suddenly claim virtue at the end.
