The Sonnets CXVIII - Like as, to make our appetite more keen
By William Shakespeare
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 neer-cloying sweetness,
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;
And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness
To be diseasd, ere that there was true needing.
Thus policy in love, to anticipate
The ills that were not, grew to faults assurd,
And brought to medicine a healthful state
Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be curd;
But thence I learn and find the lesson true,
Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.