The poet uses the first quatrain to compare love to an illness. The rhyme scheme in the first quatrain is ABAB to emphasize the solemnity of the illness that love is being compared to. The first line starts off with a simile comparing love to a fever and when a person gets a fever becomes hot and weak implying that the love he has is burning with passion and makes him weak then he ends the line by saying “longing still” meaning that the fever or hot firey passion is not going away. The second line of quatrain one says, “For that which longer nurseth the disease,” hinting that they do not want the illness/ love to go away and they are “adding fire to the fuel. The third line indicates, “feeding on that which doth preserve the ill.” This means
