Julia by John Donne

Hark, news, O envy; thou shalt hear descried / My Julia; who as yet was ne'er envied. / To vomit gall in slander, swell her veins / With calumny, that hell itself disdains, / Is her continual practice; does her best, / To tear opinion e'en out of the breast / Of dearest friends, and-which is worse than vile- / Sticks jealousy in wedlock; her own child / Scapes not the showers of envy. To repeat / The monstrous fashions how, were alive to eat / Dear reputation; would to God she were / But half so loth to act vice, as to hear / My mild reproof. Lived Mantuan now again / That female Mastix to limn with his pen, / This she Chimera that hath eyes of fire, / Burning with anger-anger feeds desire- / Tongued like the night crow, whose ill boding cries / Give out for nothing but new injuries; / Her breath like to the juice in Taenarus, / That blasts the springs, though ne'er so prosperous; / Her hands, I know not how, used more to spill / The food of others than herself to fill; / But O! her mind, that Orcus, which includes / Legions of mischief, countless multitudes / Of formless curses, projects unmade up, / Abuses yet unfashion'd, thoughts corrupt, / Misshapen cavils, palpable untroths, / Inevitable errors, self-accusing loaths. / These, like those atoms swarming in the sun, / Throng in her bosom for creation. / I blush to give her half her due; yet say, / No poison's half so bad as Julia.