| |
| 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, | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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 Tænarus, | |
| That blasts the springs, though ne’er so prosperous; | 20 |
| 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, | 25 |
| Abuses yet unfashion’d, thoughts corrupt, | |
| Misshapen cavils, palpable untroths, | |
| Inevitable errors, self-accusing loaths. 1 | |
| These, like those atoms swarming in the sun, | |
| Throng in her bosom for creation. | 30 |
| I blush to give her half her due; yet say, | |
| No poison’s half so bad as Julia. | |
