William Shakespeare
1564-1616
Sonnet CXII
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
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 others' voices,
that my adder's 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.
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