Sonnet 112

Your love and pity doth th’ 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 stoppèd are:

Mark how with my neglect I do dispense.

You are so strongly in my purpose bred,

That all the world besides me thinks y’ are dead.

Your love amends the wounds of scandal.

It ceases to matter what others think.

If I’m good with you, I can handle

All the public stink.

In fact, it’s a green and fragrant world

That abides in you for me.

I do not care to be cultured,

Naked for you to see.

I leap into the abyss of love

And let rumors fly in the wind.

I don’t attend to the critic above

Or to the flatterer descend.

You’re so much a part of my life and purpose,

Some may consider you dead or useless.