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