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
Like as, to make our appetites more keen,
2 With eager compounds we our palate urge,
With eager compounds we our palate urge,
3 As to prevent our maladies unseen,
As, to prevent our maladies unseen,
4 We sicken to shun sickness when we purge.
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge;
5 Even so being full of your ne’er-cloying sweetness,
Even so, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,
6 To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;
To bitter sauces did I frame my taste,
7 And sick of welfare found a kind of meetness,
And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness,
8 To be diseased ere that there was true needing.
To be diseased, ere that there was true taste.
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 policy in love, anticipated
10 The ills that were not, grew to faults assured,
The ills that were not, grew to faults assured;
11 And brought to medicine a healthful state
And brought to medicine a healthful state
12 Which rank of goodness would by ill be cured.
Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured.
13 But thence I learn and find the lesson true,
But hence, I learn, and find the lesson true,
14 Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.
Drugs poison him that so fell sick of 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.