GCSE English Literature Poetry (9)

On my First Sonne

• Description
• Written in 1916.
• Would have been common in that time for young children to die of illness.
• In memory of the poet's first son.
• Written like a funeral song - an elegy
• The poet was a devout Christian.
• Language
• "Thou child of my right hand" - Jesus sat on the right hand side of God, religious context. Right hand was thought to be better at the time.
• "My sinne was too much to hope of thee, lov'd boy" - Ben Jonson's only sin was to love his only child too much, making it unbearably hard to lose him.
• "seven yeeres tho'wert lent to me" - his son was a gift from God, extended metaphor of the idea that God only gave him the son as a loan, he still rightfully belongs to God.
• "Exacted by thy fate" - Ben Jonson…