- 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.