Poetry Analysis Essay

 

Death of Hope: Jonson’s Use of Elegy in “On My First Son”

Throughout history, humanity has sought to understand the reality of death. However, this understanding does little to preclude mourners from grieving the loss of their loved ones. This is especially evident in Ben Jonson’s poem mourning the death of his young son, Benjamin, to the bubonic plague, titled “On My First Son.” Through the poem, the reader is given a glimpse of Jonson’s grieving process and understands the overwhelming effects that grief has on an individual’s perspective of life. By using the form of an elegy, Jonson highlights the precarious nature of life and how one’s legacy lives on through one’s children.

When it comes to the structure of the poem, Jonson utilizes the form of an elegy to communicate his deep mourning for his son. In a study of the benefits of elegy composing, Judith Harris explains how “Elegy offers individuals the opportunity to transfigure their grief” (854). As such, it is little wonder that Jonson’s mourning led him to compose a poem where he copes with grief, saying, “Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy” (line 1). In typical elegy form, Jonson first gives the reader the image of his grief in the death of his first-born son. However, he also complicates this “farewell” as he plays with the similarity of his son to the birth of the biblical Benjamin as a “child of my right hand.” As such, his grief grows beyond his individual circumstances to encompass the existence of children as the source of both a parent’s “joy” and grief. He also breaks from the convention of an elegy, as the speaker vows, “As what he loves may never like too much” (line 12). Rather than ending the poem with a move towards acceptance, Jonson adapts this form to emphasize the impossibility for a parent to move on from the death of a child. Instead, Jonson only resolves to never let himself love with the same depth, leading him towards further grief and death rather than a reconciliation with life.

In light of his grief, Jonson also highlights the connection between life and art by comparing it to parenthood. When describing his son’s death, Jonson’s speaker describes, “Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay” (line 3). Jonson’s imagery comparing birth and death to a loan diminishes the legacy of parenthood as it comes to naught despite one’s hopes. The debt of parenthood is distributed at birth and paid in full by a child’s death, leaving nothing behind for the parents to carry on their legacy but the intangible memory of their child. As such, Jonson wishes nothing more than for his son to “Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, ‘Here doth lie / Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry’” (lines 9-10). Instead of carrying on his father’s legacy through life, Jonson’s son will have to carry it in death as “his best piece of poetry.” Jonson’s parenthood becomes memorialized through this poem as a replacement for the living legacy that he has lost in his son, leaving him “grappling with an experience that has profoundly unsettled the visual practices each had previously relied on to make sense of the world” (Mariotti 371). Ultimately, Jonson’s perception of parenthood and authorship is irrevocably linked as it is the only way for his son to live on, if only in memory.

By adopting the form of an elegy, Jonson emphasizes the impossibility of reconciling the grief of losing a child with the need for a parental legacy. Despite never reconciling himself to the death of his first-born son, Jonson’s honesty with the process of grieving moves across generations and continues to give comfort and understanding to those mourning a similar loss. If anything, it inspires one to live life to the fullest, for one never knows when there will be a death of hope.

Works Cited

Harris, Judith. “The Literature of Loss: Elegy Writing as a Therapeutic Strategy for Coping with Grief.” British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, vol. 49, no. 6, 2021, pp. 853–65, https://doi.org/10.1080/03069885.2021.1983771.

Jonson, Ben. “‘On My First Son.’” 100 Best-Loved Poems, edited by Philip Smith, Dover Publications, Inc., 1995, pp. 12.

Mariotti, Shannon. “On the Passing of the First-Born Son: Emerson’s ‘Focal Distancing,’ Du Bois’ ‘Second Sight,’ and Disruptive Particularity.” Political Theory, vol. 37, no. 3, 2009, pp. 351–74, https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591709332328.