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About

Genius Annotation

Forming a sharp contrast with his witty satires, Jonson’s On My First Son is a moving and powerful piece serving as a memorial for the passing of his first son in 1603. It is an elegy, a poem of mourning on the death of a loved-one.

In the poem Jonson says goodbye to his little boy, and wishes that he had never been a father because of the pain of his loss. He tries to convince himself that he should be joyful because his son has escaped life’s troubles and is now in heaven.

Structure
The poem is written in heroic couplets, that is, it is made up of rhyming couplets, with each line in iambic pentameter; that is, five sets of unstressed and stressed metric ‘feet’.

The traditional elegy tracks three stages of loss. Initially the lament, where the poet expresses grief, then praise for the dead person, and finally acceptance and peace.
Jonson’s poem deals with the first and last of these stages.

Language and Imagery
The language is simple yet moving, much of it monosyllables easily understood today, and unsurprisingly with religious references. The most memorable phrase, perhaps, is the metaphor in which the poet says that his boy is his ‘best piece of poetry’. The intensity of the grief comes clearly to us despite the passing of nearly four centuries.

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

Credits
Release Date
January 1, 1603
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