On My First Son (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
The Poem
Written around 1603, Ben Jonson’s deceptively plain elegy, “On My First Son,” consists of one twelve-line stanza of iambic pentameter rhyming couplets. Taking the form of a “classical” consolatio expressing the Christian-Platonic-Stoic reasons to celebrate the child’s release from the pains of human life, the poem poignantly stages the tension between the “poet’s” wish for this intellectual consolation and his emotional expressions of paternal grief. By seeking reasons for the death of his “loved boy,” the father reveals his own religious...
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