Summary
“On my First Son” is addressed to Jonson’s seven-year-old son, who had recently died. In the first line, Jonson bids him goodbye, and expresses that the child was his favorite, and the greatest source of joy in his life. Jonson writes that his mistake was hoping too much for the boy’s future. Instead of counting on having his son for his whole life, he should have recognized that he was merely lent to Jonson by God. Now, Jonson is paying back his debt. The time of his son’s death was predetermined by fate, and so even though it feels unfair, in truth it is just for Jonson to return the loan to God on the day he was meant to.
In the fifth line, Jonson’s tone becomes more desperate. He wishes he could stop being a father, so that he could envy his son’s state rather than lament it. After all, his son has escaped the misfortunes of the world, the passions of the flesh, and the misery of aging.
In the final four lines, Jonson tells his son to rest in “soft,” or quiet and gentle, peace. If anyone asks about him, the son should tell them, “here lies Ben Jonson’s best piece of poetry.” For the sake of that “best poem,” Jonson will vow to never again be too personally fond of those he loves.
Analysis
“On My First Son” takes a conventional form (the epitaph) and makes it unique to Jonson’s relationship with his son. Epitaphs are short poems written to commemorate the death of a loved one. They were commonplace in ancient Greece and Rome, and returned to popularity during the early-modern period, when many poets began publishing epitaphs.
Epitaphs traditionally had three parts: commemoration (remembering the dead person’s traits), lamentation (expressing grief and regret about their death), and consolation (convincing oneself not to mourn so much). In “On my First Daughter,” Jonson focuses almost entirely on consolation. The poem comes off as a little cold and distant, because its response to the daughter’s untimely death is a series of rational arguments aimed at proving grief unnecessary.
One of those arguments actually shows up in “On my First Son,” and the different way it’s treated speaks to the differences between the two poems. In “On my First Daughter,” Jonson reasons, “Yet all heaven’s gifts being heaven’s due / It makes the father less to rue.” In other words, remembering that my daughter was a gift from heaven, and has now returned to the one who gave her, helps Jonson feel less sad.
In contrast, in “On my First Son,” Jonson writes “Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay, / Exacted by thy fate, on the just day. / O, could I lose all father now!” As in the epitaph for his daughter, Jonson stresses that his son ultimately belonged to God, and was always going to return to him. However, here he uses the language of debt and loan, rather than gift. Gifts have a positive connotation: they’re a way of showing love, and so by invoking them, Jonson suggests that the life of his daughter was one of the ways God showed Jonson that he loved him. The language of debt and loan, in contrast, has more negative connotations. It emphasizes Jonson’s inferiority to and dependence on God, rather than the loving relationship between the two of them.
Furthermore, in “On my First Daughter,” Jonson ironically suggests that part of being a good father is being able to distance yourself from feelings of grief. In “On my First Son,” he can’t pull off such cold-blooded detachment. Instead, he laments “O, could I lose all father now!” before arguing that from an objective perspective, he could see that his son is lucky to be back with God, rather than living in the unstable and difficult world.
There are a few interesting things going on here. First, unlike in “On my First Daughter,” Jonson here presents grief as part of the father’s role. Even though he believes that, from an objective perspective, he should envy his son, in reality he feels a keen sense of loss. Yet even his argument against grief seems tinged with despair. Though Jonson explicitly expresses relief that his son will be freed from the horrors of “world’s and flesh’s rage” and the misery of aging, Jonson is also talking about himself. Unlike his son, he is experiencing all the worst the world has to offer in the death of his beloved son.
Finally, the lament “O, could I lose all father now!” might even register resentment directed towards God himself. God was often referred to as “the father.” More than a name, the term emphasized God’s status at the top of the hierarchy. He was the loving provider for humankind, but also meted out harsh punishments.
For early-modern readers, the ideal patriarch would hold economic as well as social power. He was not only the final authority for his family, but also the person who controlled their funds. Jonson’s version of God in “On my First Son” especially emphasizes this economic power. God owns souls, while Jonson and other human parents merely borrow them: indeed, it is this ownership that gives God jurisdiction over Jonson’s child.
Jonson’s lament, “O, could I lose all father now!” is deliberately ambiguous. Read in the context of the lines which follow it, we see that Jonson regrets that his own status as a father makes it impossible for him to feel the relief he should feel at his son escaping the miseries of life. Yet read in the context of the previous lines, it makes just as much sense to see Jonson as here expressing a desire for a world without the patriarchal God who took his son away from him.
Indeed, the slippage between Jonson and God is part of the point. Of course, Jonson doesn’t think he’s God (in fact, part of the tragedy of the poem is Jonson’s mortality and lack of control over his son’s survival), but the parallels between them draw out the misery Jonson feels. In the final lines of the poem, Jonson once again addresses his son, instructing him to rest in “soft peace.” (The addition of the word “soft” to the cliché “rest in peace” reminds us of the intimate and personal tone Jonson is setting in this poem.) He then refers to his son as “his best piece of poetry.”
The line is a little weird. After all, it seems to downplay his son’s humanity, reducing him to something created by his father. It makes more emotional sense when we see it in the context of the comparison between Jonson and God. Like God the father, Jonson here is thinking about himself as a creator. God makes man, and Jonson makes poetry. However, Jonson’s best creation now lies dead in the ground. The line also has a self-deprecating edge. After all, Jonson’s role in creating his son was fairly minimal, especially from an orthodox Christian perspective. As the poem emphasized earlier, his son’s soul was a gift from God. What, then, was Jonson responsible for? Perhaps his upbringing, and perhaps his physical form. The latter reading makes the most sense, because Christians believed that after death, the soul ascended to heaven, while the body remained in the earth. Jonson focuses on that body here, and writes that it was his best work. Jonson’s other poetry was much more fully a product of his own mind. Yet it all pales in comparison to his superficial role in creating the son he loved.
The final two lines of the poem build on the bitter tone Jonson has established. The poet describes himself as permanently changed by his son’s death: now, for his sake, “all his vows” will be defined by that moment. Specifically, he will now endeavor first and foremost never to like someone he loves. The idea of not liking someone you love is obviously internally contradictory, and that contradiction speaks to Jonson’s sense that his son’s death is unfair. He’s been left with an impossible situation.
God gives him a son, and he comes not only to love that son, but to like him: to want to be around him, to be happier when they are together. Yet that son also belongs to God, and can be taken from him at any time. Jonson has tried to find other ways to avoid grief: he tells himself it was fate, and wishes he could stop being a father. But ultimately, none of these tactics work. In the future, if he wants to resign himself to mortality, he must give up liking those he loves. The impossibility of the task suggests that in reality, grief is unavoidable.
