A man marked by public scandal finds shelter in his lover’s compassion. The “vulgar scandal” has left a stamp on his brow, but her love and pity fill that mark, covering his shame. He no longer cares whether others call him good or bad, as long as she transforms his faults into virtues and gives her blessing. She becomes his entire world; he learns what to be ashamed of or proud of only from her lips. The speaker shuts out all other voices—critics and flatterers alike—like a deaf adder that stops its ear. He tosses their judgments into a deep abyss. In the closing couplet, he declares that the beloved is so deeply woven into his very purpose that the rest of the world seems dead to him. The mood is fiercely private and insulated: a bubble of mutual devotion that blots out society’s noise, turning public disgrace into deep personal meaning.
Sonnet 112: Your love and pity doth the impression fill — Summary
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.