Jonson's On My First Son

Analysis of Jonson's On My First Son

The poem entitled On My First Son is a pouring out of a father's soul-a soul that pours out every last drop of pain, anguish, and love for his deceased son neatly into a beautiful poem. Ben Jonson illustrates his love and loss with concreteness and passion. Just as an artist creates a painting on paper with a pallet of colors and different types of brushes, Jonson uses thoughtful phrasing and strong diction to create a vivid word painting of his son.

The phrasing of this poem can be analyzed on many levels. Holistically, the poem moves the father through three types of emotions. More specifically, the first lines of the poem depict the father s deep sadness toward the death of

He is angry at the world, himself, and the situation that he is now in. The line, Exacted by thy fate, on the just day seems to be his only form of solace in the midst of anger (Line 4). He speaks of God and His plan and how it supercedes the plans of earthly men. Clearly, he is a man of faith because he repents for being short sighted in the presence of God s plan when he says, Oh, could I lose all father now! For why will man lament the state he should envy? (Line 6) Jumping ahead, the word father , when taken in context, is synonymous for the word faith here. Another interesting technique that jumped out here is the breaking of meter and rhyme in this section. I believe this is for added emphasis of his realization phase where he knows that he misses his son, but he knows that his son is obviously in a better place-since the poem was written during an outbreak of the

He accepts the death and gives his final thoughts in two forms as a blessing and a vow. He blesses his son by saying, Rest in soft peace, and asked, say, here doth lie Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry (Lines 10,11). By poetry, I believe he means that his son was his favorite child. Finally, he says that he will never love anything as much as he loved his son when he says, For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such as what he loves may never like too much (Lines