Sonnet 118

Being so full of your love, I deliberately sought bitter experiences to prevent complacency, like a healthy person taking medicine to avoid future sickness—but this provoked disease instead.

Original

Modern

1 Like as to make our appetite more keen

Just as to sharpen our hunger and appetite

2 With eager compounds we our palate urge,

We urge our taste with eager spices,

3 As to prevent our maladies unseen,

And to prevent hidden sickness,

4 We sicken to shun sickness when we purge.

We make ourselves sick when we purge to avoid sickness.

5 Even so being full of your ne’er-cloying sweetness,

And yet, completely full of your sweetness that never becomes exhausting,

6 To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;

I turned to bitter things to feed myself;

7 And sick of welfare found a kind of meetness,

And sick with good fortune found a kind of rightness,

8 To be diseased ere that there was true needing.

In being diseased before there was real sickness.

Volta The volta shifts from past justification to present wisdom: the speaker has learned the lesson that his policy of anticipating ills actually created them.

9 Thus policy in love t’ anticipate

Thus cunning in love, I tried to anticipate

Wordplay: “policy in love t'anticipate”

Policy means calculation, strategy, manipulation; anticipate means both 'foresee' and 'prevent through advance action.'

10 The ills that were not, grew to faults assured,

The ills that didn't yet exist, which grew into real faults,

11 And brought to medicine a healthful state

And brought a healthy state to medicine

12 Which rank of goodness would by ill be cured.

Which abundance of goodness would be cured by evil.

13 But thence I learn and find the lesson true,

But from that I learn and find the lesson true,

14 Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.

Poisons hurt him who became so sick from you.

Appetite, Compounds, and Sickness

The opening quatrain uses appetite and medicine as parallel metaphors. To make appetite keener, we add compounds; to prevent sickness, we purge. Both are strategies of excess designed to control fate. The speaker uses 'bitter sauces' as the compound that should have inoculated him against love's sweetness. Yet the paradox is surgical: the preventive medicine induces the disease it's meant to prevent. Love itself becomes the poison.

Policy vs. Nature

The couplet crystallizes the lesson: 'Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.' Love is not a condition needing treatment; attempting to treat it through policy (deliberate strategy) only poisons the lover further. This reverses 117's logic: the transgressions weren't admirable tests but self-destructive errors. The speaker has learned that love requires acceptance, not management.

If this happened today

You're so happy with someone that you actually feel scared of the happiness—like you're waiting for it to collapse. So you start small fights, create tiny problems, to 'prepare' yourself for loss. But instead of preparing yourself, you just create the loss you feared.

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