Page 2058 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

112 IT

Your love and pity doth the 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 flatterer stoppèd 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.