Writing about your own child's death is a special kind of hell. Most people can't even imagine it. Ben Jonson, the 17th-century playwright and poet who was basically the only guy in London who could give Shakespeare a run for his money, lived through it. He wrote On My First Son after his boy, Benjamin, died of the plague in 1603. It wasn't just a poem for him. It was a raw, bleeding confession.
Honest truth? This isn't just "classic literature." It's a psychological case study on how we handle the things that break us.
Why On My First Son Still Hits Hard Today
Jonson was a tough guy. He’d been a soldier. He’d killed a man in a duel and escaped hanging by reciting "neck verse" in Latin. But when the plague swept through London and took his seven-year-old son, his armor shattered. You can feel it in the very first line. He calls the boy the child of his "right hand." That’s actually a literal translation of the Hebrew name Benjamin.
It’s clever, sure. But it’s also heartbreaking.
The poem basically functions as an epigram—a short, pithy statement. Back then, people loved these. But Jonson twists the format. Instead of just being witty, he uses it to argue with God and himself. He calls the boy's death a "sin." Not the boy's sin, but his own. He felt he loved the kid too much, pinning all his hopes for the future on a human being who was never really his to keep.
The "Loan" We Never Want to Repay
One of the most famous parts of On My First Son is Jonson’s weirdly detached financial metaphor. He says the boy was "lent" to him for seven years.
Think about that for a second.
He’s trying to convince himself that he shouldn't be sad because he’s just paying back a debt. It’s a coping mechanism. We all do it. When something goes wrong, we try to rationalize it so it hurts less. "Everything happens for a reason," right? Jonson was essentially telling himself, "I didn't lose a son; I just finished a seven-year contract with Fate."
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It didn't work. You can tell it didn't work because the rest of the poem is a mess of contradictions. He says he envies the boy for escaping the "misery of age" and the physical pain of living. He’s trying to be a stoic. He's failing.
Breaking Down the Grief
The structure of the poem is intentionally tight. Jonson was a master of the heroic couplet—pairs of rhyming lines in iambic pentameter.
- Line 1-2: The shock. Addressing the "child of my right hand, and joy."
- Line 3-4: The guilt. He blames his "sin" of hoping too much.
- Line 5-8: The rationalization. Why lament when the kid is safe from the world?
- Line 9-12: The vow. He decides he will never love anything this much again.
It’s a brutal way to live. Imagine telling yourself you’ll never deeply love another person because the exit price is too high. That's what Jonson does in the final lines. He says his "best piece of poetry" was his son. Everything he ever wrote for the stage—all the fame, the applause, the money—meant nothing compared to that seven-year-old boy.
The Plague Context You Probably Missed
We tend to look at 1603 as a date in a history book. For Jonson, it was a nightmare. The plague wasn't an abstract concept; it was a literal killer in the streets. When he wrote On My First Son, he was actually away from his family, staying with friends in the country to avoid the outbreak.
Legend has it he had a vision of the boy with a bloody cross on his forehead—the mark of the plague—right at the moment he died. Whether that's true or just Jonson being dramatic, the reality of the era meant death was a constant neighbor.
Yet, even in a society where child mortality was incredibly high, Jonson’s grief stands out as uniquely modern. He doesn't just offer "thoughts and prayers." He gets angry. He gets cold. He gets desperate.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Poem
A lot of students are taught that this is a poem about Christian resignation. It’s not. Not really.
If Jonson were truly resigned to God's will, he wouldn't be calling his love a "sin." He wouldn't be trying to bargain with the idea of a "loan." Real faith usually involves a level of peace that Jonson clearly lacks here. This is a poem about the tension between being a father and being a "good" religious subject.
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He’s struggling with the fact that he loved the gift more than the Giver.
And honestly? That's the most human part of the whole thing. He admits that he’d rather be a father than a poet, but the world forced him to be a poet because his fatherhood was ripped away.
Key Takeaways for Reading Jonson
If you're looking at On My First Son for a class or just because you’re interested in how literature handles loss, keep these things in mind:
- Look for the puns. Jonson was a language nerd. Benjamin/Right hand isn't the only one.
- Watch the tone shift. It starts soft, gets intellectual and cold in the middle, and ends with a grim promise.
- Notice the lack of "Heaven." He barely mentions the afterlife. He’s focused on the "here and now" of the grave.
Practical Steps for Understanding Elegies
Understanding grief in literature helps us understand it in our own lives. If you're exploring this theme further, start by comparing Jonson's work to his contemporaries.
- Read "On My First Daughter" by Jonson. He wrote this earlier, after losing his daughter, Mary. It’s much more traditional and "peaceful." It shows how much harder the loss of his son hit him later in life.
- Check out Katherine Philips. She wrote about the death of her son, Hector, about 50 years later. It’s interesting to see how a mother's perspective in the same era differs from Jonson’s masculine stoicism.
- Journal the "Loan" Idea. If you’re dealing with loss, try writing out Jonson’s "loan" metaphor. Does viewing a relationship as a temporary gift help, or does it feel like a betrayal?
Jonson ended his poem by saying he would "henceforth" never love things too much. He didn't keep that promise, of course. He continued to have a messy, loud, emotional life. But for that one moment, in those twelve lines, he captured the exact second a heart stops trying to beat and starts trying to survive.
Study the text for its technical perfection, but remember the man behind it was just a dad who missed his kid. That's the only context that actually matters.