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.
In plain English
Your love and compassion have healed the damage that public scandal carved into my reputation. I don't care what anyone else says about me — good or bad — as long as you see past my flaws and accept my better self.
You are my entire world. The only measure of my shame or worth comes from you. No one else matters to me, and I to no one else. I've become deaf to all outside judgment — neither praise nor criticism touches me anymore.
I've thrown every other concern so deep into an abyss that I can't hear critics or flatterers. You're woven so completely into my purpose and identity that everyone else might as well not exist.
