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Your love and pity doth th’ impression fill Which vulgar scandal stamped 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 steeled 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 flatt’rer stoppèd are. Mark how with my neglect I do dispense: You are so strongly in my purpose bred That all the world besides methinks y’are dead. |
(Continuing from Sonnet 111) Your love and pity make up for the damage popular opinion has done to my reputation, since what do I care who calls me good or bad as long as you gloss over what’s bad about me and acknowledge my good? You’re the entire world to me, and I have to strive to learn what’s good or bad about me from what you say. No one else matters to me, and I matter to no one else alive. Your opinion is so powerful with me that it determines what’s right and wrong. I care so little about what other people say that it’s as if I threw their voices into a bottomless pit—that’s how deaf I am to their flattery and criticism. Notice how I disregard the fact that the rest of the world neglects me. You matter so much to me that you’re dead to the rest of the world. |