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BEN JONSON
Ben Jonson (1572–1637) was an English Renaissance poet, actor, and a contemporary of Shakespeare. “On My First Sonne” was a poem he wrote after the death of his first son, Benjamin, at age seven. The poem is a moving, emotional reflection of a father’s pain in his young son’s death. There is no pain or suffering like that endured with the death of a child.
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sinne was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy;
Seven yeeres thou’ wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
Oh, I could loose all father, now. For why
Will man lament the state he should envie?
To have so soone scap’d worlds, and fleshes rage.
And, if no other miserie, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and ask’d, say here doth lye
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetrie.
For whose sake, hence-forth, all his vowes be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.