On My First Son

In this poem, Jonson writes about the death of his seven-year-old son. It was a great loss to Jonson since his son, Benjamin, was still young. Also since he was the first son, he had the responsibility to carry on the family name and with his death, this hope was crushed. This poem also speaks about how Jonson felt and reacted to his son's death.  Jonson felt miserable about the loss of his son and even vows to never love anything else too much. 


This poem has a lot of literary worth because it talks about a topic not many poems are written about. Many poems are usually written about joy, love, beauty, etc. However, this poem speaks of the death of a love one. It brings a feeling of sadness to the reader.


This poem was very sad and hard to read. To read about losing a love one is not the most enjoyable thing. It shows how much pain Jonson went through at the lost of his son. Not many poems that I read speak of death. When I first read the three poems, "On My First Son" was the one that stuck out the most and was actually the clearest one to understand. Like Jonson and everyone else, I have experience the loss of a loved one. Although I wasn't as close to them, the feeling of sadness and remorse was overwhelming. There was very little time spent with them like Jonson only spent seven years with his son and the sudden lost was shocking and painful. The last two lines, "For whose sake...never like too much." shows that he doesn't want to love anything too much because he wouldn't want to go through the pain again. However, death is unavoidable, so it is better to love instead of avoiding the truth. As Christians, we should also try to witness to the unsave and showing love would help with this.

Jonson, Ben. "On My First Son." British Literature. Ed. Ronald H. Horton. Greenville, SC: BJU Press, 2003. 303. Print