Ex otio negotium. Or, Martiall his epigrams translated. With sundry poems and fancies, / by R. Fletcher.

A Committee.

CAst Knaves my Masters, fortune guide the chance, No packing I beseech you, no by-glance To mingle pairs, but fairly shake the bag, Cheats in their sphaeres like subtle spirits wag.

Or if you please the Cards run as they will, There is no choice in sin and doing ill. Then happy man by's dole, luck makes the ods, He acts most high that best out-dares the gods. These are that Raw-bon'd Herd of Pharoahs Kine Which eat up all your fatlings, yet look lean. These are the after-claps of bloudy showres Which like the Scots come for your gude and yours The gleaners of the field, where, if a man Escape the sword that milder frying-pan, He leaps into the fire, cramping clawes Of such can speak no English but the cause. Under that foggy term, that Inquisition, Y' are wrack'd at all adventures On suspition. No matter what's the crime, a good estate's Dilinquency enough to ground their hate. Nor shall calm innocence so scape, as not To be made guilty, or at least so thought. And if the spirit once inform, beware, The flesh and world but renegadoes are. Thus once concluded, out the Teazers run All in full cry and speed till Wat's undone. So that a poor Dilinqu••nt fleec'd and torn Seems like a man that's creeping through a horn. Findes a smooth entrance, wide and fit, but when Hee's squeez'd and forc'd up through the smaler end,

Hee looks as gaunt and prin, as he that spent A tedious twelve years in an eager Lent. Or bodyes at the Resurection are On wing, just rarifying into ayre. The Emblem of a man, the pitied Case And shape of some sad being once that was. The Type of flesh and bloud, the skeleton And superficies of a thing that's gone. The winter quarter of a life, the tinder And body of a corps squeez'd to a cinder When no more tortures can be thought upon Mercy shall flow into oblivion. Mercyful Hell! thy Judges are but three, Ours multiform, and in pluralitie. Thy calmer censures flow without recal, And in one doom soules see their final all. We travel with expectance: Suffrings here Are but the earnests of a second fear. Thy pains and plagues are infinite, tis true Ours are not only infinite but new. So that the dread of what's to come exceeds The anguish of that part already bleeds. This only difference swells twixt us and you, Hell has the kinder Devils of the two.