The 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 neʼer-cloying sweetness,

To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;

And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness

To be diseasʼd, ere that there was true needing.

Thus policy in love, to anticipate

The ills that were not, grew to faults assurʼd,

And brought to medicine a healthful state

Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be curʼd;

But thence I learn and find the lesson true,

Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.