William Shakespeare. 1564–1616

Sonnet CXII.

“Your love and pity doth the impression fill”


YOUR love and pity doth the impression fill  
Which vulgar scandal stamp’d upon my brow;  
For what care I who calls me well or ill,  
So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow?  
You are my all-the-world, and I must strive    5
To know my shames and praises from your tongue;  
None else to me, nor I to none alive,  
That my steel’d sense or changes right or wrong.  
In so profound abysm I throw all care  
Of other’s voices, that my adder’s sense   10
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.  
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:  
  You are so strongly in my purpose bred,  
  That all the world besides methinks are dead.