POETRY IN LOCKDOWN:9

Many people are dying who would — or might — have lived.  With a person’s death it’s natural to turn to poetry for consolation or at least for a meaningful expression of grief, a feeling many people find hard to express.

‘Elegy’ is poetry written in tribute to someone who has died, or someone or something lost. But the poetry of true grief transcends elegy. It is rarer and more intense.

I will post a few poems of grief. The first is by the larger than life scholar, wit, poet and playwright Ben Jonson. In his time (early 17^th century) the death of children was much, much more common than it is today, but the death of this eldest son hit Jonson hard. The boy was called Benjamin (which means in Hebrew right-handed, dexterous and also, ironically, fortunate) and he died aged 7 in 1603. This is his father’s response: it contains some conventionally clever tropes, but they are not what makes this piece so moving.

On My First Son

by Ben Jonson

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy,
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father, now. For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon ’scaped world’s and flesh’s rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age!
Rest in soft piece, and, asked, say here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.