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On My First Son Summary & Analysis
by Ben Jonson

On My First Son Summary & Analysis
by Ben Jonson

  • Intro
  • Summary
  • Themes
  • Line-by-Line
    Explanations
  • Symbols
  • Poetic
    Devices
  • Vocabulary &
    References
  • Form, Meter, &
    Rhyme Scheme
  • Speaker
  • Setting
  • Context
  • Resources
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The Full Text of “On My First Son”

1Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;

2   My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.

3Seven years thou'wert lent to me, and I thee pay,

4   Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

5O, could I lose all father now! For why

6   Will man lament the state he should envy?

7To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,

8   And, if no other misery, yet age?

9Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say here doth lie

10   Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.

11For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,

12   As what he loves may never like too much.

  • “On My First Son” Introduction

    • “On My First Son” is an elegy by the English poet and playwright Ben Jonson. He composed the poem shortly after his son died of the plague in 1603; his son was just seven years old at the time. Unlike many of Jonson’s other poems—which tend to be biting, sarcastic, and satirical—“On My First Son” is a moving testament to Jonson’s anguish and grief in the wake of his son’s death. In his despair, Jonson wrestles with some of the toughest questions a poet—and a person—can face. He asks himself whether he can ever recover from such a sharp blow—and he wonders whether anything can possibly compensate for his loss.

  • “On My First Son” Summary

    • Goodbye to you, my favorite child, my joy. I placed too much hope in you, beloved child. You were lent to me for seven years and now I have to pay back the loan—fate demands it. Oh, I would give up being a father altogether now! Why should we grieve at all? We should, instead, envy you. You have escaped so quickly from the demands of the world and of the body. You will never have to experience the torment of aging. So rest peacefully—and if anyone asks you, tell them, “Here is the best poem Ben Jonson ever wrote.” For your sake, I will vow from here forward not too love anything too much.

  • “On My First Son” Themes

    • Theme Death, Grief, and Faith

      Death, Grief, and Faith

      “On My First Son” is an elegy for Ben Jonson’s eldest son, who died of the plague in 1603 when he was just seven years old. The poem mourns this tragedy in intimate, moving terms. The loss has thrown Jonson (the poem’s speaker) into despair. In his anguish, he wrestles with some of the most difficult questions that a person can face. He wonders whether it is possible to recover from such a biting, bitter loss. Breaking with the traditions of the elegy, Jonson argues that no consolation will serve in the face of such a tragedy: not even religion—with its promise of eternal life—can comfort him.

      In the wake of his son’s death, Jonson turns to religion, hoping that it will console him. He asks why he feels grief at all—he should “envy” his son his new “state.” That is, his son is now in Heaven, and not only that; by dying young, he has escaped the “world’s and flesh’s rage” as well as the “misery” of “age.” In other words, death has freed his son from all the suffering and temptation that human beings usually endure on earth. The poem even suggests that the child’s true home was never on earth. He was simply here on loan: “Seven years thou'wert lent to me[.]” He doesn’t belong to his earthly family or to his father—instead his true home and his true owner are in Heaven; his true father is God.

      This is a powerful consolation—or, at least, it should be. In his other elegies—like “On My First Daughter," which also mourns the death of a child—Jonson uses very similar language to try to console mourning family members (including himself). This is what an elegy traditionally does. It starts with grief: sharp, unbearable grief. But then it works its way toward consolation, often using the Christian hope of Heaven to soothe the pain. That should work here too: thinking of Heaven should make Jonson feel better about his son’s tragic and untimely death.

      But it doesn’t seem to soothe his grief: he ends the poem as devastated as he was at its beginning. Instead of moving on, heartened by his religious faith, he closes the poem with a bitter vow: “henceforth all his vows be such / as what he loves may never like too much.” In other words, he vows to never again love anyone or anything as much as he loved his son. In these lines, Jonson wrestles with a terrible question. He wonders whether it is worth loving someone at all, given that they will die—and could die at any moment. His answer seems to be a resolute no. Rather than renewing his confidence or his faith, then, his elegy—with its beautiful, traditional religious consolations—fails to help him recover from his grief and suggests that all such intense grief may be impossible to resolve.

    • Theme Fatherhood As Authorship

      Fatherhood As Authorship

      “On My First Son” wrestles with a devastating tragedy: Ben Jonson’s son has died of the plague at seven years old. Jonson feels profound and searching grief in response—grief so powerful that it calls into question some pretty basic things. We’ve already seen how (in our themes entry on “Death, Grief, and Faith”) the death of his son makes Jonson question whether religion can console him in the face of tragedy. But the failure seems contagious: even as religion fails to console him, so too do fatherhood and family.

      In a striking metaphor at the heart of “On my First Son,” Jonson equates poetry and fatherhood. He compares his son to a literary text, calling him, “[my] best piece of poetry.” In other words, fathering a son is like writing a poem: Jonson considers himself to be his son’s author. This is a moving statement from a poet who had such a high opinion of himself and his own poetry that he once wrote an ode to himself, “An Ode to Himself.” Jonson is saying here that being a father is more important, more powerful, than any poem he’s ever written.

      But Jonson refuses to find consolation in fatherhood. One could imagine him turning to his surviving children with a renewed sense of love—renewed by his sharp sense of their frailty and mortality. But his son’s death produces just the opposite reaction. It makes him want to give up being a father altogether: “O, could I lose all father now!” he proclaims in line 5. He closes the poem by vowing to himself that he will never love someone as much as he loved his son. When Jonson calls his son “[my] best piece of poetry,” he not only offers his dead son a moving and elegant compliment. He also quietly suggests how deep his grief is, how difficult to assuage. Neither religion nor family can comfort him. And even poetry itself seems diminished—after all, his “best piece of poetry” now lies moldering in the grave.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “On My First Son”

    • Lines 1-4

      Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
         My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
      Seven years thou'wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
         Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

      The first 4 lines of “On My First Son” establish the poem’s themes and its form. The speaker of the poem is Ben Jonson himself; he is mourning the death of his first son, who died from the plague in 1603 when he was just seven years old. Jonson describes him as the “child of my right hand.” These words indicate that he hasn't lost just any child: he's lost his favorite child, the one he loved the most and put the most hope in. Indeed, he complains that he had “too much hope of thee, lov’d boy.” In other words, he had high expectations for his son, which makes his death all the sadder. An alliterative /h/ sound links together “hand” and “hope”—emphasizing the force and power of Jonson's hopes.

      Even as Jonson mourns his son's death in powerful and affecting terms—unusual for a poet who is often biting and sarcastic—he also recognizes that human life is frail and fleeting. In lines 3-4, he describes human life as a metaphorical loan. His son was “lent to [him]. " The metaphor suggests that Jonson’s son doesn’t belong on earth; his true home is in Heaven. However, the sound of these lines suggests that Jonson has a hard time accepting this idea. Note the sharp and tough /t/ consonance in line 4:

      Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

      It almost sounds like Jonson’s teeth are clenched, like he’s spitting out this line in frustration.

      Lines 1-4 thus establish the poem as an elegy—a poem of mourning. Usually, elegies follow a set pattern or narrative. They start with a speaker deep in grief—but the speaker eventually finds consolation. Jonson’s elegy does begin with its speaker deep in mourning for his son. In the first four lines of the poem, Jonson focuses on his grief, wallowing in it. All of the first four lines of the poem are end-stopped, which makes them feel slow and ponderous, as though Jonson were dwelling on each detail of his grief, unable to let anything go.

      Further, Jonson talks directly to his son—an instance of the poetic device apostrophe—as though he were still alive, negotiating, complaining, and rehearsing their relationship. The use of apostrophe suggests that he is having trouble letting go: he can't accept that his son is dead, even as he bids him "farewell." He loved his son too intensely to simply give him up. From the first lines, then, there is strong evidence to suggest that Jonson struggles to find consolation. Even though an elegy is supposed to comfort people in mourning, the author of this elegy cannot find a way to comfort himself: it seems that there is no consolation powerful enough to overcome this tragedy. And indeed, as the poem continues it will become clear that Jonson is breaking the elegy's usual pattern; he doesn’t succeed in finding a source of consolation that can soothe his despair.

      The first four lines of “On My First Son” also establish the poem’s formal pattern. It is written in heroic couplets. In other words, each line of the poem is in iambic pentameter—a meter that features five poetic feet per line, in an unstressed-stressed da-DUM rhythm. Jonson deploys this meter consistently throughout, with the exception of a few ambiguous lines, like line 3. The lines also rhyme with each other in an AABB pattern. Heroic couplets are a distinguished form in English poetry; they are usually reserved for elevated topics, like heroic battles or serious philosophical disputes. But Jonson chooses to use the form here, for a poem about his personal grief. In doing so, he makes an implicit argument about his son’s death: it is as monumental an event as any battle; his son is as important as any hero.

    • Lines 5-8

      O, could I lose all father now! For why
         Will man lament the state he should envy?
      To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,
         And, if no other misery, yet age?

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    • Lines 9-12

      Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say here doth lie
         Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.
      For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,
         As what he loves may never like too much.

  • “On My First Son” Symbols

    • Symbol Right Hand

      Right Hand

      The “right hand” is a symbol of power, prestige, and importance. The symbol assumes that most people are right-handed—and that therefore the right hand is stronger and more powerful than the left. The power and importance of the right hand (for most people, anyway) is reflected in common English idioms and phrases like “right hand man.” A “right hand man” is as vital and important as someone’s right hand. When Jonson calls his son his “right hand,” he thus suggests how important his son was to him. He can’t imagine living without his son; in his absence, he is a weakened, diminished man. Indeed, he may even be suggesting that his “first son” was his favorite child—the most important of his offspring. The symbol thus suggests how close Jonson and his son were—and how devastating the son's death is for Jonson.

    • Symbol The World

      The World

      In this context, the “world” is a symbol for all the mundane cares and responsibilities—business, household chores, taxes, etc.—that slowly grind people down, taking away the joy and pleasure they might otherwise experience. For the speaker, these difficulties form a kind of “rage”: they build and build until they become overpowering. His son thus should be considered lucky—from one standpoint—to have escaped all these cares and worries with his child-like wonder and joy intact. But the speaker finds it hard to accept that viewpoint. Even though he knows he should be glad his son is in Heaven—and free from the miseries of the “world”—he cannot help grieving his death, passionately and intensely. Indeed, this reluctance to celebrate his son's death indicates that maybe Jonson doesn't view the troubles of the "world" as so overwhelmingly negative after all—perhaps because they come alongside immense joys like love and family.

    • Symbol Flesh

      Flesh

      “Flesh” here is a symbol of sexual desire, temptation, and sin. Literally speaking, of course, the word just refers to the human body, its muscles and bones. But there is a long tradition, particularly in Christianity, of thinking of the body as a sinful and unholy thing—the place where uncontrolled erotic desires come from, for instance. The body thus drags the soul down, essentially getting it dirty; it puts the soul at risk of losing its place in Heaven. For Jonson, then, his son could be considered lucky, since he will never have to endure the temptations of sexuality or wrestle with his own desires. Dying as an innocent child, he is virtually assured a place in Heaven, without any of the trials and tribulations that most Christians must go through on their way there. It is thus a measure of Jonson's deep despair that even the idea of his son escaping his "flesh" doesn’t console him.

  • “On My First Son” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • End-Stopped Line

      Most of the lines in "On My First Son"—three-quarters of them—are end-stopped. As a result, the poem generally feels slow, measured, and reflective. These long, pensive pauses give the reader a sense of Jonson’s mood as he meditates on his son’s death. Instead of rushing through his grief or trying to work his way toward resolution, he lingers on it—even wallows in it.

      This is evident in the run of end-stopped lines that open the poem. All of the poem’s first four lines are end-stopped:

      Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
      My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
      Seven years thou'wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
      Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

      As Jonson lays out the facts, meditates on his own “sin,” and describes the harsh terms of the loan he has been forced to repay, he pauses at the end of each line. These end-stops are heavy, ponderous. It almost feels like Jonson is having a hard time continuing the poem—as though he wants to give up at the end of each line.

      Since these end-stops are so strong—and since they dominate the first four lines of the poem—they strongly shape the reader’s experience of the poem's rhythm, pace, and mood. The poem’s few enjambments feel like deviations from this rhythm, so the end-stopped lines that follow these enjambments feel less like closure and certainty and more like a return to despair. The reader can see this effect in lines 9-10, for instance:

      Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say here doth lie
      Ben       Jonson his best piece of poetry.

      The enjambment in line 9 creates a sense of expectation and uncertainty: the reader wonders how Jonson will characterize his son’s death, what he will choose as an epitaph. But then line 10—and its strong end-stop—feels like a return to the steady, almost monotonous despair of the rest of the poem. The return to firm end-stop suggests that it doesn't matter much what the epitaph is; Jonson's son is still dead, and nothing can change that.

    • Enjambment

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    • Caesura

    • Alliteration

    • Assonance

    • Consonance

    • Metaphor

    • Apostrophe

    • Rhetorical Question

  • “On My First Son” Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • Thou
    • Thee
    • Wert
    • Exacted
    • Thy
    • Just Day
    • All Father
    • State
    • 'Scap'd
    • Rage
    • Misery
    • Age
    • Ask'd
    • Doth
    • Be Such
    • What
    • Like
    Thou

    • An obsolete way of saying “you.” In its second appearance in the poem, it's part of the contraction "thou'wert." The apostrophe indicates that it should be pronounced as one syllable, and the compound word means "you were."

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “On My First Son”

    • Form

      “On My First Son” is an elegy—a poem of mourning. It is 12 lines long and is just one stanza (though this stanza can be broken down into six couplets). Elegies don’t have a set form, like the sonnet or the villanelle. They can take many forms. For his elegy, Ben Jonson chose heroic couplets, a dignified and elevated form that is often used in poems about the most serious and prestigious themes. Usually, heroic couplets are reserved for poems about heroic quests, political intrigue, or philosophical disputes. By using heroic couplets for a poem about a private matter—his personal grief over the death of his son—Jonson suggests that his grief is as important, as monumental, as any of these serious, elevated subjects.

      Although elegies don’t have a set form, they do tend to follow a narrative pattern. Elegies start with grief: their speakers have lost someone or something important. That loss feels devastating, irreparable. But elegies usually move toward consolation: the speaker finds some form of comfort that helps them move on from their grief. Jonson’s poem, however, doesn’t entirely follow this pattern. Like most elegies, it begins with a speaker in despair, so deep in grief that he “could…lose all father now!” That is, he's so sad that he doesn't even want to be a father anymore. At the same time, he does recognize that his son’s early death—while tragic—has spared the son much pain and suffering on earth. Instead of enduring “world’s and flesh’s rage,” his son can “rest in soft peace.” The question, however, is whether the speaker finds any consolation in this vision of his son in a Christian heaven.

      There are good reasons to believe that he doesn’t. Instead of celebrating his son’s blissful afterlife, he still feels miserable after contemplating it—he even vows that whatever he “loves” going forward he will “never like too much.” In other words, he won’t take too much pleasure in the people he loves from now on. The speaker’s bond with his son is so tight, his love so intense, that the traditional consolations don’t help in his grief; even imagining his son in heaven isn’t enough. The poem thus breaks some of the traditions of the elegy. Instead of finding consolation, the speaker seems to reject it, overwhelmed by both grief and love for his lost son.

    • Meter

      “On My First Son” is written in iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter has a da DUM rhythm, with five feet per line. The reader can hear this steady rhythm in the poem’s second line:

      My sin | was too | much hope | of thee, | lov’d boy.

      Iambic pentameter is an important and distinguished meter in English poetry. At the time Jonson was writing, in the early 17th century, it was everywhere: in the plays that he and his friends (like William Shakespeare) were writing, and in the sonnets and love poems of aristocratic poets like Sir Philip Sidney. It was close to being the default meter for poems being written in this period. And Jonson was a master of iambic pentameter: he prided himself on his capacity to control and manipulate it.

      The meter of “On my First Son” is thus, unsurprisingly, generally smooth and controlled. Many of its lines are in perfect iambic pentameter. And many of the lines that do have metrical substitutions use predictable and commonly accepted substitutions. For example, line 9 starts with a trochee (stressed-unstressed):

      Rest in | soft peace, | and, ask’d, | say here | doth lie

      A trochee in the first foot of a line of iambic pentameter is fairly ordinary and expected. It’s one of the substitutions that poets use regularly to keep their poems from getting too steady and predictable in their rhythms. These smooth lines of iambic pentameter form a steady structure, something for the speaker to cling to as he process his grief for his dead son.

      That said, there are a few places in the poem where the meter breaks down a little bit, as in the metrically ambiguous third line of the poem:

      Seven years thou’wert lent to me, and I thee pay,

      The reader could scan this in a couple of different ways. Arguably, the most logical thing to do is to treat the first three syllables of the line as a single, three-syllable foot, “Seven years”—an anapest (though it is certainly also possible to scan this first section as "Seven years"). After that, the line falls into iambs. An anapest in the first foot of an iambic line is similar, rhythmically, to an iamb (it just takes an extra syllable to get to the stress), and it’s similarly acceptable as a metrical substitution. But the rhythm of the line is not strong; it relies on an awkward elision (the reader is somehow supposed to pronounce “thou’wert” as one syllable) and takes a while before it falls convincingly into iambs. The poem’s confidence seems shaken here—for the speaker, it seems, just imagining his son as a loan is so disconcerting that it knocks the whole poem off its rhythm.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      “On My First Son” is written in rhyming couplets. Its rhyme scheme is thus:

      AABBCCDDEEFF

      Its rhymes tend to be simple, straightforward, and strong. There are only two rhyme words that are more than one syllable (“envy” in line 6 and “poetry” in line 10), and all of the poem’s rhymes are perfect rhymes. (Some of them may sound like slant rhymes to a modern ear—like the rhyme between “why” and “envy” in lines 5-6—but that’s because English pronunciation has shifted since Jonson’s day; he and his early readers would have heard the rhymes as perfect rhymes.) Even as the speaker confronts serious, debilitating grief, the poem’s rhymes remain strong.

      In fact, the poem’s use of rhyme tells us something about the way that the speaker grieves the death of his son. The poem is in heroic couplets—rhyming lines of iambic pentameter. This is a form generally reserved for dignified topics like heroic battles, political disputes, or philosophical and religious questions—not personal matters and private griefs. But Jonson uses heroic couplets here, even though the poem is personal and private. In doing so, he makes an implicit argument: his son’s death is as monumental, as important, as any historical battle or theological question. The speaker uses strong, direct rhymes—despite the overpowering grief he feels—as a way of insisting on the dignity of his son’s life and the importance of his death.

  • “On My First Son” Speaker

    • “On My First Son” is an autobiographical poem. Its speaker is the poet, Ben Jonson. Indeed, he even names himself in the poem. The poem addresses a real event in Ben Jonson’s life: in 1603, his seven-year-old son died of the plague. (Just before his son’s death, Jonson reportedly had a prophetic dream in which his son appeared before him with a bloody cross cut into his forehead.)

      The poem wrestles with the grief and despair that Jonson felt after his son’s death. Indeed, the poem is unusual for Jonson. Often a satirical, biting, and witty poet, he wrestles here with some of the most difficult and complex questions that any parent—indeed, any person—has to face: he wonders why should he love anyone or anything, since everyone will die and everything will pass away. At the end of the poem, Jonson seems to conclude that the risk isn't worth it. Not even imagining his son in heaven comforts him, and so he vows in the poem's final line not to get too attached to anything he loves from here on out.

  • “On My First Son” Setting

    • “On My First Son” is an autobiographical poem: it recounts the grief and despair that consumed the poet, Ben Jonson, after his seven-year-old son died of the plague in 1603. The poem is thus set in 17th-century England, where (and when) Jonson lived. However, the poem makes no specific references to the country or the period. (For instance, it was likely written the same year that Queen Elizabeth, the long-time ruler of England, died—but it says nothing about her or her death). Instead, when it references the real world it does so in vague, general terms. For instance, in line 7, the speaker describes the “world’s and flesh’s rage.” So while he acknowledges the existence of the world—with its suffering and sorrow—he doesn’t describe with any specificity or detail. Instead, the true setting of the poem is the inner life of Ben Jonson himself: it is a poem that takes place inside his mind and heart, in the dark parts of himself where he wrestles—unsuccessfully—with his intense grief and despair after his son’s death.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “On My First Son”

      Literary Context

      Ben Jonson wrote “On My First Son” during one of the most dazzling periods in the history of English literature. The last decades of the 16th century are sometimes called the Golden Age of English literature, with the creation of major poems and plays by William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, and Jonson himself. These poets did a lot to set the agenda for English poetry. For instance, they developed and perfected iambic pentameter—which quickly became the most prestigious and the most widely used meter in the English language.

      In “On My First Son,” Jonson draws on the innovations of his era. Jonson became a master of iambic pentameter, building on the example of poets like Sidney and Spenser. That mastery is frequently on display in “On My First Son.” His iambic pentameter lines rhyme with each other, forming heroic couplets. In the way that he uses heroic couplets, however, Jonson breaks with the poets who came before (and after) him. The break is subtle but important to understanding the poem. Where other poets generally reserve heroic couplets for the most dignified problems and themes—bravery and battle, religious questions, philosophical disputes—Jonson uses the form to discuss a private matter: his personal grief over the death of his son. In doing so, Jonson quietly insists that his son’s death is as important as any battle or political dispute—that his life had the dignity of any king or hero.

      Historical Context

      “On My First Son” was written shortly after Ben Jonson’s seven-year-old son died of the plague in 1603. It reflects one of the sad and difficult facts about life in pre-modern England. In the absence of effective medicine, 12% of all children died by the end of their first year (and more than a third of all women died in childbirth). Children had roughly a 50/50 chance of reaching the age of ten—and 36% of children died before the age of six. By modern standards, these numbers are astonishing. But for families in Renaissance England, when Ben Jonson wrote, these tragedies were part of everyday life; almost every family would lose a child. Many families lost most or all of their children, and indeed, Jonson's first child, a daughter named Mary, died as an infant in 1593. Jonson memorialized her in his elegy "On My First Daughter."

      For parents like Jonson, each of these deaths was a wrenching tragedy—a blow so severe it could draw them into despair. That despair is evident in “On my First Son”; indeed, the speaker seems consumed by grief—so completely submerged in it that he has lost his connection with the world around him, including the broader historical context that surrounds the poem and his son’s death.

      1603, the year that Jonson’s son died, was an eventful year in English political life. In March of that year, Queen Elizabeth I—the country’s powerful, revered, and long-time queen—died. Elizabeth never married; her image as a virgin queen, betrothed to her country, was key to maintaining her power and control in a deeply patriarchal, male-dominated society. But she died without an heir—and her distant relative, James VI of Scotland, took the throne after her death, starting the Jacobean period in English history. This became a period of considerable turmoil, anxiety, and transformation in English society. For a poet like Jonson—who aligned himself closely with the aristocracy, using them to secure his own social and professional advancement—it would’ve been an important moment: a time to find new alliances and adjust to the shift in power and personality at the head of the English state. The complete absence of these concerns from “On My First Son” suggests just how deep and consuming Jonson's grief was.

  • More “On My First Son” Resources

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