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1591: Arnold Cosbie, writing his own elegy

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The manner of the death and execution of Arnold Cosbie, for murdering the Lord Burke, who was executed at Wanswoorth town's end on the 27 of January 1591. With certain verses written by the said Cosby in the time of his imprisonment, containing matter of great effect, as well touching his life as also his penitencie before his death.

ARNOLD COSBIE’S
ultimum vale to the vain world.

An Elegy written by himself
in the Marshalsea after his condemnation.

Break heart, be mute my sorrows past compare,
Cosbie complain no more, but sit and die,
Tears are no tokens of such dreriment,
As thy true grief pours to the angry heavens,
The heavens offended with thy foul misdeeds,
O great Commander of this glorious round,
The workmanship of thine immortal hand,
Thou that doest ride upon the Cherubins,
And tunest the deeps in dreadful harmony,
Cast down thine eye upon a wretched soul,
And from thy throne of grace great Jacob’s God
Rain mercy on me miserable man,
Fallen into snares of sin and shameful death,
From thee sweet Savior, Savior of the world.
O world, vain world, unconstant, & unkind,
Why hast thou bred me, nursed me, brought me up,
To see this day of sorrow and of shame:
Cosbie complain. Captains and men of war,
With whom I wholime spent my careless days,
Days dated but to this, to end in shame,
Farewell, adieu to you and all the rest
That follow armes, and armes and life adieu,
From armes and life I pass drenched in the pit
Digged by my desperate hands, hands full of blood.
Bleed heart to think what these accursed hands
Have perpetrated, Pardon heaven and earth,
And gentle Lord misled by my amis,
Foully by me sent to this longest home,
O pardon Cosbie’s cruel mind,
His mind enraged, and gentle blood by wrath
And fury tainted and empoisoned.
Why do I kill my doleful dying heart,
With sad rehearsal of this heavy chance.
O death rock me asleep, Father of heaven
That hast sole power to pardon sins of men,
Forgive the faults and folly of my youth,
My youth misspent in waste and wantonness,
And for sweet Jesus sake forgive my soul,
Foully defiled with this above the rest,
And lastly you whose fame I have defiled,
My kin, my Countrymen, friends, and allies,
Pardon, o pardon, such as men to men
Can give, I beg for wronging you in all,
For shaming you in this my wretched end,
The fruitless crop, the meed of my desert,
My bad, my base deserves, sweet Friends forget,
Friends, countrymen, and kinsfolks all forget,
My name, my face, my fact, o blot me out,
Out of the world, put me out of your thoughts,
Or if you think, o think I never was,
Or if you think I was, think that I fell,
Before some fort, some hold in Belgia,
With this suppose beguile your sorrows friends,
Think that I fell before the Canon’s mouth,
Even in mine honors heigth that blessed day,
When in advancement of my name, I left
My countries enemy in his base reuolie:
A wretched man to talk of honors high,
Fallen so basely into the pit of shame,
The pit of death: my God, my God forgive me,
Next to my God, my country pardon me,
Whose honor I have stained and laws infringe,
And thou my sovereign Mistress and my Queen,
Bright star of England’s globe, forgive my fact,
Nor let it touch thy Royal Princely heart,
That Cosbie hath misdone so heinously.
The circle of my time is compassed,
Arrived to the point where it began.
World, country, kin, and friends farewell farewell,
Fly thou my soul to heaven the haven of bliss,
O body bear the scourge of thine amiss.

More atmospheric Elizabethan movable type:

First pamphlet: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

Second pamphlet: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

… and, the source of the poem: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

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