Sonnet 118: Like as to make our appetite more keen

Portrait of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare 1564–1616
118The Sonnets

Like as to make our appetite more keen With eager compounds we our palate urge, As to prevent our maladies unseen, We sicken to shun sickness when we purge. Even so being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness, To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding; And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness To be diseased ere that there was true needing. Thus policy in love t' anticipate The ills that were not, grew to faults assured, And brought to medicine a healthful state Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured. But thence I learn and find the lesson true: Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.

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