The Poetry Corner

The Sonnets CXII - Your love and pity doth the impression fill

By William Shakespeare

Your love and pity doth the impression fill, Which vulgar scandal stampd upon my brow; For what care I who calls me well or ill, So you oer-green my bad, my good allow? You are my all-the-world, and I must strive To know my shames and praises from your tongue; None else to me, nor I to none alive, That my steeld sense or changes right or wrong. In so profound abysm I throw all care Of others voices, that my adders sense 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.