Sonnet 118

Farewell to the Fair Youth

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

Notes

TLN 1641archaic vocab
“eager compounds we our palate urge”
'Eager' in Early Modern English means sharp, sour, or biting — not merely enthusiastic. 'Compounds' are mixed medicinal preparations, typically bitter herbal or chemical remedies. The line says: we stimulate a dull appetite by forcing it to taste sharp, unpleasant medicine.
TLN 1642cultural context
“to prevent our maladies unseen, We sicken to shun sickness when we purge”
To 'purge' is to take a strong laxative or emetic to cleanse the body of harmful excess. Galenic medicine held that disease arose from an imbalance of the four bodily humours (blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile); a purge forced out the dangerous surplus before symptoms appeared, making the patient temporarily ill to prevent a worse illness. The speaker compares seeking out unpleasant company to this prophylactic medicine.
TLN 1646archaic vocab
“sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness To be diseas'd”
'Meetness' means fitness or appropriateness. 'Sick of welfare' means sickened or surfeited by well-being — not ill, but so saturated with contentment that it became its own discomfort. The speaker reasoned it was fitting ('meetness') to court suffering before he actually needed to, because excess pleasure had dulled him.
TLN 1648wordplay
“policy in love, to anticipate The ills that were not”
'Policy' in Early Modern English meant calculated worldly cunning — shrewd, often self-serving strategy — rather than the modern neutral sense of a set of rules. It carried a tinge of the manipulative: the 'politic' man looked out for himself and planned ahead, often at others' expense. The speaker admits he applied this calculating strategy to love itself, manufacturing problems before they existed.
TLN 1651archaic vocab
“rank of goodness, would by ill be cur'd”
'Rank' here means swollen, overabundant, or corrupt from excess — not a military rank or a row of things. A healthy state is called 'rank of goodness' because it has grown so full of good that it has become unwholesome, like overgrown vegetation that has rotted.