On My First Daughter and On My First Son Ben Jonson’s poems on the death of his children Ben Jonson lived in the English Renaissance period when childhood mortality was very high due to health problems, diseases, lack of medicines and unhygienic life conditions. He got married to Anne Lewis in the early 1590s. Their first daughter, Mary was born in 1593 who died only six months later. Jonson wrote his poem On My First Daughter upon her death. His first son, Benjamin, born 1596, died of the plague in 1603 at age seven and Jonson wrote the poem On My First Son shortly after his death1.
On My First Daughter and On My First Son were both published with many other poems in Epigrams in the first folio collection of Ben Jonson’s works in 1616. On My First Daughter (number XXII. in the Epigrams) is a twelve line poem with rhyming couplets with the rhyme scheme aa bb. The first two lines of the poem can be seen as a statement that gives us informations about the child and its parents. We get to know that Mary, the first daughter of Ben Jonson and his wife, who they got when they were very young (”daughter of their youth”), passed away and they are mourning together. The second couplet is about two philosophical/religious thoughts.
The first is that nothing on Earth lasts forever, with the meaning everybody has to die someday. The second thought is that what has been given from heaven, which symbolizes God, belongs to heaven/God. It can be interpreted as God’s presents are not presents as such, because they are just loaned to us and we have to give them back. Mary, the little baby has been such a gift from God for her parents, but the parents had to return this gift very soon, as we can see in the next line. This second thought gives the father a little comfort, because he knows that his daughter is back to heaven, which is a better place than the Earth. The next two lines reveal that Mary was only six months old when she died. This means of course, as shown in lines 5 and 6, that she was an infant. In a religious sense being an infant is the same as being innocent, because she was too young to be able to sin, her age was her assurance on her way to heaven. Lines 7-9 are pointed at Virgin Mary, after whom Mary Jonson was named (”whose name she bears”). Line 7 tells us that the baby’s soul is at ”heaven’s queen”, at Mother Mary, who puts her soul among the other innocent ”virgin” souls in line 9. This is also a escription of a very religious moment, it shows that only the soul goes to heaven, lives on in the afterlife, while the body, being fleshly, remains on Earth. Lines 7 and 9 are a kind of parentheses to line 8, where baby Mary’s mother appears and comforts her with her tears. These three lines show us a strange triangle. There are three female characters here and it does not matter which two we pick out of them we find many similarities. This connection is in case of mother and daughter, Mary and Anne Jonson very obvious. So let’s look at Queen Mary and baby Mary instead.
We know that they share the same name, the baby girl was named after Queen Mary. They have also in common that they are both virgins. Queen Mary was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus that is why she is also called Virgin Mary. We mentioned the baby girl’s innocence earlier, and we know that innocent and virginal are often used as synonyms in case of girls. And right now they are both in heaven, both have left this life, but their soul lives on there. 3 If we look at Queen Mary and Mrs Jonson, we also find many similarities. First they are both mothers, whose first born child died.
Altough the children did not die at the same age, they were both innocent when they passed away, and this gave a little comfort to the mothers while they were mourning. It is interesting to observe that they have the same function, so when the baby dies, she leaves her birth mother, but gets a new one in heaven, because Mother Mary takes her on her side. After mentioning heaven and the afterlife in lines 7-9 we return to earth in lines 10-12. In line 10 we can see that the baby girl is separated from her parents, she is in heaven, but they remain in this life.
And so does her body, which is laid in her grave. The father now asks the heavy and dark earth in the last line that it should cover her body very gentle and with this picture we get an even sadder ending. Ten years after the death of his daughter Ben Jonson wrote a similarly sad poem on a similarly tragic occasion. His seven years old son, Benjamin died of the plague in 1603. On My First Son (number XLV in the Epigrams) is a twelve line poem, just like the previous one and has a similar structure, though there are many differences, too.
The poem starts surprisingly with a saying goodbye, where a mourning father says farewell to his first son. The father does not tell us the son’s name, but there is a big hint in the first line: ”child of my right hand” that is the meaning of the name Benjamin. Benjamin is a biblical figure whose name means son of the right side, which is usually interpreted as son of goodness, fortune and happiness. 4 Even though the father does not introduce his son to the readers by name, he gives a very short but nice desciption of him by just telling his name’s etymology.
In the second line we can see that the father takes responsibility on the son’s death, saying that it is his fault/sin that he died, because he had too high expectations of him. Lines 3 and 4 contain that the boy was seven years old and that he was just lent by God for this short time to his father, but now has to return to him. Line 5 starts with a wish, the father wishes that he is less sensitive and less parent-like about the death of his son. He does not understand his own reactions, that is why he asks: ”(… )For why Will man lament the state he should envy? . The father does not understand why he is so sad about the death of his son, because he is at a much better place now and this should be rather envied. The father sees death as an escape from this life’s problems such as anger, fury and fighting and sees dying at a young age as the possibility of staying forever young, because one does not have to face aging. In the last part of the poem we see a kinder version of the usual inscript of the tombstones (”Rest in soft peace”), which expresses the great affection of the father towards the son again.
This is even more revealed in the next two lines, where he says that if somebody asked who lies in the grave, it should be told that it is ”his best piece of poetry”. In this way the author tells us that his first son was the best he had ever created and he is better than his literary works. As a counclusion the poet makes a vow for the future, he swears that he is never going to love anything or anybody as much as he loved his first son, because he does not want to feel that pain ever again. It is obvious that these two poems of Ben Jonson have much in common.
The first thing that we have to look at, is the title and we can see that both poems are dedicated to his children. If we go on and look at the first words ”farewell” and ”here lies” we also find out that both children died and the poems are written as a kind of saying goodbye. If we look at the form of the poems we can see that both have got twelve lines and the same rhyme scheme aa bb. The structure is also very similar, both poems can be divided into three parts, each of them presenting a new thought.
In the first four lines we get information about the child who passed away like gender, age, name and also a very similar thought on life and death. ”Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay, Exacted by the fate, on the just day” and ”Yet all heaven’s gifts being heaven’s due” refer to the same passage in the Bible, Job 1:21: ”(… )the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. ”5 It is ment by these lines that everything and everybody on Earth belongs to God, he gives life and takes it away, life and earthly belongings are just rentals which have to be given back when time comes.
The second thoughts of the poems are different. In lines 5-9 of On My First Daughter we have a passage about how the baby’s soul is in heaven next to Mother Mary. Lines 5-8 contain the struggels of the father who asks himself why he has been suffering when he knows that his son is at a better place now. These lines have in common that they assert that afterlife is better than this life and it is better for the children to be there in good hands (Mother Mary’s and God’s). The third part and thought describes in both poems a scene on Earth.
We have the feeling that the father stands right next to the children’s grave and gently wishes for them that they may rest in peace. The ending of the poems is different though, because in the first poem about his daughter he only thinks about her ”comfort” in her grave, while he and his wife remain childless on Earth. In the other poem about his son he not only thinks about his child but also himself, when he promises himself that he is never ever going to love someone or something so much as his son, because he does not want to get that hurt again.
An other thing which could be analysed in the poems, is their gender. It is strange to talk about gender in case of poems, but in case of these two, it can be adequate. It would be easy to conclude that On My First Daughter has got a more feminine and On My First Son a more manly voice. In the first poem we find lots of words that emphasize this femininity: her, Mary, daughter, she, queen, mother, virgin. We already mentioned earlier that this poem has got three female characters, the daughter, her mother and Mother Mary and how they are all in connection with each other.
On My First Son shows the opposite, it contains more masculine words: son, child of my right hand (=Benjamin), father, man, he, Ben Jonson, his, he. In this second poem we can only discover two characters, Ben Jonson and his son who was named after his father. Even if we find the first poem’s vocabulary more feminine and the second one’s more masculine, their point of view is just the other way around. On My First Daughter has got a more objective, less sensitive voice. The poem is written in third person singular and plural which always express a bigger distance to the plot: she, her parents, their youth, the father, her mother.
The other poem dedicated to the son is very emotional and very subjective. It is written in first person singular (my, me, I), and addresses the child in second person singular (thou, thee). These characteristics give us the feeling that Ben Jonson had a closer relationship to his son than to her daughter, and he proves this statement by saying that his son is ”his best piece of his poetry”. We do not know whether it is because first sons had a special status in the family earlier being the first heir.
It is also possible that he simply had a closer relationship to his son, because he lived seven years, and he could not get to know his daughter, who died after six months as an infant. To sum up we can say that Ben Jonson has got a father figure in the first poem, in the second he behaves more like a mother, that is why the genders of the poems can be seen as mixed up. All in all it is important to see that Ben Jonson wrote these two poems to make his deceased children immortal, and they may have left this life early but they live on next to God and Mother Mary in heaven and also in the lines of their father’s great poems.
Sources Jonson Ben. On My First Daughter. http://www. luminarium. org/sevenlit/jonson/daughter. htm May 28, 2012 Jonson Ben: On My First Son http://www. luminarium. org/sevenlit/jonson/son. htm May 28, 2012 The Book of Job http://ebible. org/kjv/Job. htm May 28, 2012 Ben Jonson. http://www. poetryconnection. net/poets/Ben_Jonson May 28, 2012 Booth, Stephen. Precious Nonsense: The Gettysburg Address, Ben Jonson’s Epitaphs on His Children, and Twelfth Night. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1998 1998. http://ark. cdlib. org/ark:/13030/ft538nb2zt/ May 28, 2012
Vance, Michael. Heaven’s Due: A Comparison of Ben Jonson’s On My First Daughter and On My First Son http://kamus3. homestead. com/jonson. html May 28, 2012 1http://www. poetryconnection. net/poets/Ben_Jonson 2http://publishing. cdlib. org/ucpressebooks/view? docId=ft538nb2zt&chunk. id=d0e3522&toc. depth=1&toc. id=d0e2157&brand=ucpress 3http://publishing. cdlib. org/ucpressebooks/view? docId=ft538nb2zt&chunk. id=d0e3522&toc. depth=1&toc. id=d0e2157&brand=ucpress 4http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Benjamin_%28name%29 5http://ebible. org/kjv/Job. htm
