← Sonnet 43 All Sonnets Sonnet 45 →

Sonnet 44

The speaker laments that his body, being made of slow matter, cannot journey to the beloved with the speed that thought can travel across distance.

Original
Modern
1 If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
If the heavy matter of my body were pure thought,
2 Injurious distance should not stop my way,
Then distance, cruel as it is, would not hinder my path,
3 For then despite of space I would be brought,
For then, defying space itself, I would be transported,
4 From limits far remote, where thou dost stay,
From distant boundaries, to where you remain,
5 No matter then although my foot did stand
It would matter nothing even if my feet stood
6 Upon the farthest earth removed from thee,
On the farthest reach of the earth, separated from you,
7 For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,
Because swift thought can leap across both ocean and continent,
8 As soon as think the place where he would be.
As instantaneously as thinking of where you are.
'As soon as think' captures thought's instantaneity—it exists before conscious deliberation.
Volta The volta shifts from the fantasy of being 'thought' to the cruel reality: he is not thought, but heavy, temporal flesh that must 'attend' to time's slow passage.
9 But ah, thought kills me that I am not thought
The volta: the cruel realization of embodiment
But the thought destroys me—that I am not thought,
10 To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,
To vault vast distances when you are away,
11 But that so much of earth and water wrought,
But because I am made up so much of earth and water,
Earth and water are the two slowest of the four classical elements (the speaker lacks the quickness of air and fire).
12 I must attend, time’s leisure with my moan.
I must wait through time's agonizing slowness, groaning all the while.
'Time's leisure' is oxymoronic: time feels leisurely (slow) to the lover's impatience.
13 Receiving nought by elements so slow,
Receiving nothing from these slow elements,
14 But heavy tears, badges of either’s woe.
But only heavy tears, the marks of both our griefs.
'Either's woe' means the sorrow of both speaker and beloved; tears are 'badges' (signs, tokens) of this shared suffering.
The Elemental Prison

Sonnet 44 invokes Renaissance natural philosophy: all matter is composed of four elements (earth, water, air, fire). Thought is swift because it belongs to the mental realm; the speaker's body, made of earth and water alone, is doomed to slowness. This is not poetic fancy but cosmological fact—the speaker is literally trapped by the physics of his own being. Absence becomes metaphysical necessity, not mere circumstance.

The Paradox of Shared Suffering

The couplet introduces a reversal: because the speaker cannot reach the beloved, the beloved shares the speaker's grief. 'Either's woe' suggests the absence is not one-directional; both are prisoners to distance. This mutuality justifies the impossibility—love is thwarted not by the beloved's indifference but by the cosmos itself. Tears become the only medium that connects them across the distance, a 'badge' worn by both.

If this happened today

A modern parallel might be someone video-calling a long-distance partner from a slow airport WiFi connection. The mind is already there, but the technology—the material medium—betrays the soul's urgency. Or: you text your beloved from a traffic jam, arriving hours late. Your thoughts reached them instantly; your body crawls.

← Sonnet 43 All Sonnets Sonnet 45 →