Sonnet · Love
Sonnet 118: Like as, to make our appetite more keen
1Like as, to make our appetite more keen,
2With eager compounds we our palate urge;
3As, to prevent our maladies unseen,
4We sicken to shun sickness when we purge;
5Even so, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,
6To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;
7And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness
8To be diseas'd, ere that there was true needing.
9Thus policy in love, to anticipate
10The ills that were not, grew to faults assur'd,
11And brought to medicine a healthful state
12Which, 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.
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“Sonnet 118: Like as, to make our appetite more keen” by William Shakespeare — quilloak.com/poems/sonnet-118
Quick facts
- Poem
- Sonnet 118: Like as, to make our appetite more keen
- Poet
- William Shakespeare
- Length
- 14 lines
- Form
- Sonnet
- Themes
- Love
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 14 lines · one 14-line stanza
- Line length
- Lines run 10-11 syllables (median 11). No single length dominates, which is normal once elision and contraction are in play.
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- William Shakespeare1564–1616
- Source record
- PoetryDBSonnet 118: Like as, to make our appetite more keen by william-shakespeare, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 1d2ab0bccf0b3e8a…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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