On My First Daughter and on My First Son - Ben Jonson's Poems on the Death of His Children
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.2
The next two lines reveal that Mary was only six months old when she died. This means of course, as shown in lines
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.2
The next two lines reveal that Mary was only six months old when she died. This means of course, as shown in lines