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Sonnet · Love

Sonnet 112: Your love and pity doth the impression fill

by William Shakespeare

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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Quick facts

Poem
Sonnet 112: Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Poet
William Shakespeare
Length
14 lines
Form
Sonnet
Themes
Love, Death & Loss

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape
14 lines · one 14-line stanza
Line length
Mostly 10-syllable lines (pentameter length).

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Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.

Author record
William Shakespeare1564–1616
Source record
PoetryDBSonnet 112: Your love and pity doth the impression fill by william-shakespeare, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision
Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record
Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint
SHA-256 cffcd578e80eea01
Editorial handling
Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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