Sonnet 112

Constancy and the Muse

  1. 1 Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
  2. 2 Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
  3. 3 For what care I who calls me well or ill,
  4. 4 So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
  5. 5 You are my all-the-world, and I must strive
  6. 6 To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
  7. 7 None else to me, nor I to none alive,
  8. 8 That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong.
  9. 9 In so profound abysm I throw all care
  10. 10 Of others' voices, that my adder's sense
  11. 11 To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
  12. 12 Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
  13. 13 You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
  14. 14 That all the world besides methinks are dead.