The poet's fears about the beloved's loss and his own insufficiency dissolve in a moment of grace, and the beloved's love reassures him against all temporal and personal anxiety.
Possible reference to a historical eclipse or the dimming of a monarch's light. The word carries astronomical, political, and personal meanings.
Sonnet 107 is unique in explicitly referencing external events: 'the mortal moon hath her eclipse endured' (possibly Elizabeth I) and 'the sad augurs mock their own presage.' The poem moves from public crisis to private reassurance, suggesting that personal love provides sufficient comfort against historical catastrophe. The sonnet doesn't deny the external threat but rather asserts that love transcends it. Personal devotion becomes a complete response to public calamity—not through denial but through grace.
Throughout earlier sonnets, the poet's primary anxiety centers on his own inadequacy: he cannot praise the beloved sufficiently, his verse is poor, his love is incomplete. By Sonnet 107, the dynamic completely inverts: the beloved's reciprocal love toward the poet becomes sufficient to resolve the poet's anxieties. This sonnet is reciprocal in a way earlier sonnets were fundamentally not—the beloved responds and loves back, and this mutual love is presented as redemptive. This marks the sequence's crucial turn toward forgiveness.
During a personal crisis or political upheaval, your partner's steady love becomes an anchor that makes external chaos survivable. The reassurance is not rational (love can't fix politics), but emotionally, it transforms everything.