Ben Jonson

On My First Sonne

Hebrew name meaning

"Child of my right hand" translates Benjamin, the boy's actual name. The right hand signals favor and blessing in biblical terms.

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy,
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy;
Seven years th' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,

Loan theology

Puritan doctrine held children were "lent" by God, not owned. Jonson uses financial vocabulary—lent, pay, exacted—to frame his son's death as a transaction coming due.

Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now. For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie

Double meaning

"Piece" means both a work of art and a fragment/part of himself. He's calling his dead son better poetry than anything he wrote.

Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry;
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such
As what he loves may never like too much.

Final vow

"Like" here means desire intensely, not just enjoy. He's vowing never to want anything too much again—love made him vulnerable to this pain.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Biographical Facts

Jonson's son Benjamin died of plague in 1603, age seven, while Jonson was away. The poem appeared in his 1616 *Workes*—published thirteen years after the death, which matters because this isn't raw grief but processed loss.

The title uses "Sonne" (son) not "sun," though both spellings existed. Some editions play with the pun, but Jonson's original is clear: this is about his child, not cosmic metaphor.

Jonson lost multiple children (another Benjamin later, a daughter Mary). By 1616, when he collected his poems for publication, child mortality wasn't unusual—but this poem's restraint was. Most elegies of the period ran long and loud. Jonson gives twelve lines.

What "Too Much Hope" Means

Line 2's "sin was too much hope" isn't Catholic guilt—it's Calvinist theology. Puritans warned against loving earthly things (even your children) more than God. Excessive hope in a child's future = idolatry.

The poem's central question (lines 5-8) flips grief inside out: why mourn when the boy escaped "world's and flesh's rage, / And, if no other misery, yet age"? This is standard Christian consolation—death as release—but Jonson can't quite sell it. The question mark gives him away.

The final couplet's vow—"what he loves may never like too much"—tries to solve the problem by limiting future attachment. "Like" meant intense desire in 1616 (see Shakespeare's Sonnet 116: "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds"). He's promising to love less desperately, which is either wisdom or defeat, depending on your read.