Summary:
A commentary on Ben Jonson's poem "On My First Sonne," about the death of his seven-year-old son and the grief and sadness that he felt.
This poem is about death. The author, Ben Jonson, a famous playwright, writes about the death of his eldest seven-year-old son and how sad and grieved he is about it. He does this and expresses his discomfort by using the following techniques...
The first four lines are uses of metaphors. The first line says 'child of my right hand'. Here Ben Jonson compares his son and himself to Jezus and god, showing that he loved and needed his son very much. The second line he says that his 'sin was to hope too much'. Here he says that he loved his son soo much that it was forbidden by god, which again shows how much he valued his son. The third line and fourth line just says that his son was lent to him and now has been paid back on the day chosen by destiny. All this shows that Ben Jonson was a faithful Christian.
The fifth and sixth line is a bit confusing because they have hidden meanings. By 'all father' I think he means sanity because in the sixth line he says, why should men be sad about something they want to have, in this case death. He thinks that death is a sort of reward that comes after life. He says that it is a state that men envy, here Ben Jonson has doubts whether to be sad or happy that his son died, after all he could be in heaven now, enjoying all the luxuries that life has to offer.
He now says that his son is lucky to have escaped this cruel world that has so many miseries. Such as pain and aging. The phrase 'so soone scap'd worlds' is an example of alliteration. It is the repetition of the soft 's' sound. This is to emphasize how peaceful and nice death is. By the end of the poem, he reaches a decision and says that his son deserved to go to heaven early and so he shouldn't be sad about it.
The pace of the poem is slow but not too slow that it is sad, it is slow to be formal rather than sad. It has to be formal because it was read at his son's funeral. So in this poem Ben Jonson is expressing grief but not in a melancholic way but more in a respective way. To show grief without making the reader feel how he feels but just to understand how he feels.
This is the complete article, containing 410 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page).
