Shakespeare’s speaker aches with the frustration of separation. He imagines that if his body were made of thought instead of slow, heavy flesh, he could bridge any distance instantly. Thought can race across sea and land as soon as you think of the destination, so he would be with his beloved in a flash. But he is made, he laments, of earth and water — the dull elements — and so he must remain stuck, forced to wait and mourn while time creeps by. The only thing his sluggish body can produce are heavy tears, which he calls “badges” of both his own woe and his loved one’s. The mood is wistful and weighed down with longing; the poem lives in the painful gap between the mind’s swift flight and the body’s leaden reality. The closing couplet deepens the isolation, suggesting that these tears are the only mark of a mutual grief that distance keeps them from sharing directly.
Sonnet 44: If the dull substance of my flesh were thought — Summary
If the dull substance of my flesh were thought, Injurious distance should not stop my way; For then despite of space I would be brought, From limits far remote, where thou dost stay. No matter then although my foot did stand Upon the farthest earth remov'd from thee; For nimble thought can jump both sea and land, As soon as think the place where he would be. But, ah! thought kills me that I am not thought, To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone, But that so much of earth and water wrought, I must attend time's leisure with my moan; Receiving nought by elements so slow But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.