Theme:     Flatter to Deceive.
Content:   A follow-on from 113 with the opening "Or" and continuing discussion of the mind's state. A specious sonnet that ostensibly flatters the subject but develops the underlying doubt of the subject's worth initiated in 113. The sonnet concludes with pre-eminence of the author's mind and status and the assignment of the lesser of any sins to the author himself.

• The author deliberates on whether the confusion between what his eye sees and his mind thinks is caused by either being drunk with love for his subject thereby not being able to discern what his eye truly sees, or, his subject's love having magical properties that causes him to misinterpret what he sees.
• Self-aggrandisement of the author here in being a king crowned with the subject's love, but deference to the subject is retained as it is the subject who enables the author to assume that role.
• The punning on I and eye from 113 continues with I say and eye saith which represents the dichotomy between what the author's mind thinks and what the author's eye sees.

• After the questions of Q1 that discuss the possible causes of corruption, Q2 centres on the reality of what corruption actually happens, irrespective of why.
• Recurrence of the apparent transforming power of the subject's love in being able to change bad objects into sweet images of the subject.
• Whilst the author compared himself to a monarch in Q1, he compares the subject to a monster in Q2.
• This whole quatrain is specious: there is apparent flattery of the subject by comparing them to a cherubin but the implication is that the subject is a monster who merely resembles a cherubin. Equally, Creating every bad a perfect best alludes to the underlying badness of the subject that is superficially disguised by appearances. This is all linked to this sonnet's and 113's discussion of the difference between what the mind knows and what the eye sees.
• sin, which will be explicitly referred to later, is embedded in things, indigest and even cherubins.
• Creating recalls 113's "deformed'st creature"

• The dichotomy of the author's confusion being caused by either his mind or eye is at last resolved as being in the eye: it well knows what it really sees, suggesting deliberate trickery by the eye in flattering what it sees to deceive the mind which blindly drinks it up.
• The issue of flattery, by way of the author flattering what he sees, is extended to the author himself in further self-aggrandisement by describing his own mind as great and of him being like a king.
• This self-aggrandisement could be feigned though as it could be alluding to the ignorance of monarchs who blindly eat and drink whatever they are served with.
• The reference to the author as a king contrasts sharply with him imminently distancing himself from, the phonetically similar, sin.
• Again, sin can be found in the act of, and literally embedded in the words of, seeing and drinks.

• A sinister dimension is alluded to again by way of the poisoned chalice, which echoes 113's reference to the subject being recalled by the sight of bad objects as well as good.
• The author assigns the lesser sin of being potentially fooled by what he sees to himself, implying the greater sin is the subject's love (or the subject themselves) that causes the confusion.
• sin, now explicitly revealed, is also embedded within poisoned.
• The mind and the eye are finally conjoined by mine eye.
• Humorous reflection of the reversal of the eye and the mind's perceptions by the sonnet ending with the words first and begin - begin also being an anagram of the being that conversely appears in the first line.