Definition of "poyson"

Bat if honesty, modesty, and sobernes, be required in apparaile, & adorning of mens selues, as we see that it is commended and commaunded in Deuteronomie, & seing that S. Paule also in his epistle to Titus, willeth that there should be among us a sober and holy countenaunce, singularly and specially in women, which ordinarily be very curious in their garmentes, it is certayne and sure, that there is some poyson or venym hidden under the grasse.

1581, anonymous author, A Treatise Of Daunses‎

XX Therewith she spewd out of her filthy maw A floud of poyson horrible and blacke, Full of great lumpes of flesh and gobbets raw, Which stunck so vildly, that it forst him slacke 175 His grasping hold, and from her turne him backe: Her vomit full of bookes[*] and papers was, With loathly frogs and toades, which eyes did lacke, And creeping sought way in the weedy gras: Her filthy parbreake all the place defiled has. 180 XXI As when old father Nilus[*] gins to swell With timely pride above the Aegyptian vale, His fattie waves do fertile slime outwell, And overflow each plaine and lowly dale: But when his later spring gins to avale, 185 Huge heapes of mudd he leaves, wherein there breed Ten thousand kindes of creatures, partly male And partly female of his fruitful seed; Such ugly monstrous shapes elswhere may no man reed.

1590, Edmund Spenser, Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I‎, published 1921

OLD QUEENE. O no, sweet Margaret, the fatall poyson Doth work within my heart, my brain pan breakes, My heart doth faint, I dye.

1594, Christopher Marlowe, Massacre at Paris‎