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Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Born in 1572, Ben Jonson is regarded as one of the major dramatists and poets of the seventeenth century...
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FURTHER READING
Poems About Sons
A Boy and His Dad
by Edgar Guest
Come Up From the Fields Father
by Walt Whitman
Fishing in Winter
by Ralph Burns
Goodnight Moon
by James Arthur
Odysseus to Telemachus
by Joseph Brodsky
On My First Son
by Ben Jonson
With Kit, Age 7, at the Beach
by William Stafford
Yesterday
by W. S. Merwin
Related Prose
Poetic Form: Epigram
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Epigrams: On my First Son

 
by Ben Jonson

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; 
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy. 
Seven years tho' 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 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage, 
And if no other misery, yet age? 
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, 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. 



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