Shakespeare's Sonnets (1923) Yale/Text/Sonnet 112
112
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? 4
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 steel'd sense or changes right or wrong. 8
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of other's voices, that my adder's sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense: 12
You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
That all the world besides methinks are dead.
1 impression: mark, brand
4 o'er-green: cover as by a vine or grass
allow: approve
7, 8 Cf. n.
10, 11 Cf. n.
12 with . . . dispense: I am indifferent to neglect (by others)
13 in my purpose bred: engrafted in my life
14 besides: except you