New Year's Day

And here’s the first sonnet of the new year  J

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CXVIII

  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.

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Meetness  J  And the word sets off a pattern of enjambements in every other line up to the volta, the volta being, of course, the but in the standard Shakespearean position.  Another sonnet in the afternoon!