On my first Sonne Ben Jonson 1616

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On my first SonneBen Jonson 1616
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An elegy - a poem of sorrow about a fathers
grief for his dead son.
On my first Sonne
The poem is about the death of the poets son,
Benjamin, age 7 years
In 1603 Jonson left London to stay at a country
house. The plague broke out in London and
Jonsons wife wrote to tell him his son had died.
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Thou second person singular pronoun used here
rather than you to express closeness of
relationship.
Benjamin linked to Hebrew words right hand
Son addressed directly, saying goodbye
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and
joy My sinne was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy
Punished for expecting too much of his son
Error or mistake but with religious significance
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Speaking of the seven years of his sons life as
a loan from God
Paying for the life with the sons death

• Seven yeeres thou wert lent to me, and I thee
  pay,
• Exacted by thy fate, on the just day

Has to be paid back but just could mean the
correct or exact time
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I would like to stop being a father now

• O, could I loose all father, now. For why
• Will man lament the state he should envie?

Be sad about
Death as a relief from all the problems of life,
being at one with God
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To have escaped the demands of passion
alliteration

• 
  
• To have so soone scap'd worlds, and fleshes rage,
• And, if no other miserie, yet age?

Having got through life, old age itself is a
fearful stage
Trying to convince himself his son is better off
dead
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This contrasts with fleshes rage in the
previous couplet

• 
  
• Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say here doth lye
• Ben. Jonson his best piece of poetrie.

The epitaph for his son
His proudest creation is his son
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Dont love anything too much as the pain of
losing it is too much.

• 
  
• For whose sake, hence-forth, all his vowes be
  such,
• As what he loves may never like too much.

simple language, the only metaphor is of the boy
as a loan
rhyming couplets divided into 3 sections