English poem
Sonnet 118: Like as, to make our appetite more keen
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 diseas'd, ere that there was true needing. Thus policy in love, to anticipate The ills that were not, grew to faults assur'd, And brought to medicine a healthful state Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cur'd; But thence I learn and find the lesson true, Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.
More by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 113: Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind
- Sonnet 114: Or whether doth my mind, being crown'd with you
- Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds
- Sonnet 117: Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all
- Sonnet 119: What potions have I drunk of Siren tears
- Sonnet 11: As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow'st
- Sonnet 120: That you were once unkind befriends me now
- Sonnet 121: 'Tis better to be vile than vile esteem'd