Sonnet Cxviii

William Shakespeare

     Like as, to make our appetites 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 tuff 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, to 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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