Jonson / Poems
On Gut
"On Gut" GUT eats all day and letchers all the night, So all his meat he tasteth over twice ; And striving so to double his delight, He makes himself a thorough-fare of vice. Thus, in his belly, can he change a sin, Lust it comes out, that gluttony went in. Notes: Letchers: To play the lecher - a man immoderately given to sexual indulgence; a lewd or grossly unchaste man.
On My First Daughter
"On My First Daughter" Here lies, to each her parents' ruth, Mary, the daughter of their youth; Yet all heaven's gifts being heaven's due, It makes the father less to rue. At six months' end, she parted hence With safety of her innocence; Whose soul heaven's queen, whose name she bears, In comfort of her mother's tears, Hath placed amongst her virgin-train: Where, while that severed doth remain, This grave partakes the fleshly birth; Which cover lightly, gentle earth! Notes: An epigram addressing Jonson's deceased six-month-old daughter. Notice that XXII is filled with gentle, heavenly imagery compared to XLV, where the death of his seven-year-old son from the plague is wrought with images of anger and loss. Adapts Marital's lament for the death of his slave girl, Erotion, ending his poem with the couplet, "This grave partakes the fleshy birth; / which cover lightly, gentle earth." Martial concludes his with the lines, "Lie lightly on her, turf and dew / She put so little weight on you". The sincerity of the elegy exists in the attempt to construct a funeral monument in verse that future generations will be able to read....
On My First Son
"On My First Son" Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy ; My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy. Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay, Exacted by thy fate, on the just day. Oh, 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 peace, 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. Notes: EXAMPLE OF ELEGY: An elegy is a poem about a person who has died. Elegies usually consist of three basic parts: a mourning of the dead, a celebration or praise of the dead person, and finally some form of consolation. Child of my right hand: a literal translation of the Hebrew name "Benjamin" which implies the meaning "dexterous" or "fortunate." The boy was born in 1596 and died on his birthday in 1603. Here doth lie / Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry: Poet and father are both "makers," Jonson's favorite term for the poet. Line 3: The speaker says his son was "lent" to him for seven years. "Lent" is here a metaphor to describe the son's short life on earth. The speaker also says he has to "pay" back his son. The use of the verb "pay" carries forward the financial metaphor by likening the son's death to repaying a loan. Line 4: The son's death is "exacted" from the speaker. "Exacted" is another financial metaphor to describe how God or Heaven takes the son back from the speaker. Line 5: The speaker wishes to abandon all thoughts of fatherhood because the very thought of being a father now makes him sad. Line 6: The speaker suggests that one shouldn't "lament," or feel sadness about, death. Lines 7: Why not? It's because death allows us an escape from the pains of the world and of the flesh—things that might cause pain and sadness. He calls this "flesh's rage," which is a personification of inanimate body parts, giving them human emotion. Line 8: Death also allows us to escape from old age, which the speaker considers a "misery." The speaker implies early in the poem that he is somehow responsible for his son's death. He says he had "too much hope" for his son, and that this was his "sin" (2). The language of punishment is present elsewhere in the poem as well.
On Something, That Walks Somewhere
"On Something, That Walks Somewhere" At court I met it, in clothes brave (fine) enough, To be a courtier; and looks grave enough, To seem a statesman: as I near it came, It made me a great face; I ask'd the name. A Lord, it cried, buried in flesh, and blood, And such from whom let no man hope least good, For I will do none; and as little ill, For I will dare none: Good Lord, walk dead still. (?) Notes: Jonson uses a defamilarization technique, giving the "lord" only vague human features. The lord says to expect no good nor ill from him, for he will give none.
The Forest (collection)
First published in 1616 folio titled Works Most of the fifteen poems are addressed to Jonson's aristocratic supporters, but the most famous are his country-house poem "To Penshurst" and the poem "To Celia" ("Come, my Celia, let us prove") that appears also in Volpone. The Forest marks a further culmination of both Jonson's literary and his social ambition. King James is a welcome guest at Penshurst, and so is laureate Ben. In The Forest, Jonson does not so much retire into himself as move into a better neighborhood and construct a better self to go with it. These actions represent, as I have said, a culmination of ambition, a social and literary triumph. But the triumph, though real enough, is tinged with melancholy and defeat. Shift in gender from the Epigrams to The Forest. The Epigrams are overwhelmingly masculine. A few are directed to (or at) women, but most concern men and the world of men's business. The Forest gives far more attention to women. In the houses of the great, the poet can almost imagine himself as the lordly proprietor: 'All is there,' he says to Penshurst, 'As if thou then wert mine, or I reigned here'. But, clearly, all is not his, and he does not reign. Instead, the poet's position and the woman's are troublingly alike. His retirement enforces that resemblance, but his aggression toward women tries to erase it.
About the Author
Jonson's poetry is informed by his classical learning. Some of his better-known poems are close translations of Greek or Roman models; all display the careful attention to form and style that often came naturally to those trained in classics in the humanist manner. Although he wrote two of his most moving poems to his dead children, Jonson focused rather rarely on the dynamics of the family relationships that so profoundly concerned Shakespeare. Jonson interested himself in relationships that seemed to be negotiated by the participants, often in a bustling urban or courtly world in which blood kinship no longer decisively determined one's social place. Jonson's poems of praise celebrate and exemplify classical and humanist ideals of friendship: like-minded men and women elect to join in a community that fosters wisdom, generosity, civic responsibility, and mutual respect. Jonson earned his living entirely from his writing, composing plays for the public theater while also attracting patronage as a poet and writer of court masques. Yet Jonson's yearing for recognition ran far beyond any desire for material reward. A gifted poet, Jonson argued, was a society's proper judge and teacher, and he could only be effective if his audience understood and respected the poet's exalted role. Jonson set out unabashedly to create that audience and to monumentalize himself as a great English author. In 1616, he took the unusual step, for his time, of collecting his poems, plays, and masques in an elegant folio volume. Writing poems and circulating them through the private network of manuscript transmission opened the way to more elevated company. Jonson aspired to be in the England of Queen Elizabeth and King James what Virgil and Horace had been in the Rome of Emperor Augustus: he aspired to be a laureate poet, a poet who would not only serve the ruler but would stand on a level with the ruler... There was always a suspicion - as there would be still - that praise for the virtue of the rich and high-born might be no more than self-serving flattery, a suspicion that threatened to undermine the apparent flatterer's reputation for virtue. Jonson mentored a group of younger poets, known as the Tribe, or Sons, of Ben. Many of the royalist, or Cavalier poets—Herrick, Suckling, Vaughan in his secular verse—proudly acknowledged their relationship to Jonson or gave some evidence of it in their verse.
"On Lucy, Countess of Bedford"
THIS morning, timely rapt with holy fire, I thought to forme unto my zealous Muse, What kinde of creature I could most desire, To honor, serve, and love; as Poets use. I meant to make her fair, and free, and wise, Of greatest blood, and yet more good than great; I meant the day-starre should not brighter rise, Nor lend like influence from his lucent seat. I meant shee should be curteous, facile, sweet, Hating that solemne vice of greatnesse, pride; I meant each softest vertue, there should meet, Fit in that softer bosome to reside. Onely a learned, and a manly soule I purpos'd her; that should, with even powers, The rock, the spindle, and the sheeres controule Of destinie, and spin her owne free houres. Such when I meant to faigne, and wish'd to see, My Muse bade, Bedford write, and that was shee. Notes: Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford, was a famous patroness of the age, to whom Jonson, Donne, and many other poets addressed poems of compliment. This elegant epigram of praise plays off against the Pygmalion story, in which the sculptor molds a statue of his ideal woman and she then comes to life. He attempts to construct the idealized woman, but ends up realizing Lucy is his inspiration.
To Penshurst
To Penshurst One of the first Country House poems, "To Penshurst" was written about the Sidney estate at Penshurst Place in Kent, which was then owned by Sir Philip Sidney's younger brother Robert. The poem lauds the bounty of provision at the Sidney home, adding pastoral motifs along the way. Everything at Penshurst works in ecclesiastical harmony with nature: "The painted partridge lies in ev'ry field/ And for thy mess is willing to be kill'd" (29-30). As with all country house poems, Jonson relates the goodness of Penshurst Place with the goodness of its residents. The poem praises the Sidney family as the paragon of the good life, of whom know one wishes ill: "There's none, that dwell about them, wish them down/But all come in, the farmer and the clown" (47-48). Jonson praises the Sidney family because, by opening their home to even "the farmer and the clown" (48), they show everyone what the "good life" means.
Epigrams (collection)
first published in 1616 folio titled Works The epigrams explore various attitudes, most from the satiric stock of the day: complaints against women, courtiers and spies abound. The condemnatory poems are short and anonymous; Jonson's epigrams of praise, including a famous poem to Camden and lines to Lucy Harington, are longer and are mostly addressed to specific individuals. Although it is included among the epigrams, "On My First Sonne" is neither satirical nor very short; the poem, intensely personal and deeply felt, typifies a genre that would come to be called "lyric poetry." A strong note of defiance runs through Jonson's epigrams. These are pushy poems. They bully their subjects, and they bully their readers. If you don't like them, Jonson tells us, and if you don't take them at their own valuation, you're a fool. The collection as a whole records an autobiographical action, Jonson's own movement from the contaminating company of knaves and fools into the elevating presence of the great and good. The Epigrams may contain about as many poems of blame as of praise, but the two sorts are not distributed evenly. Far more of the poems of blame come early in the sequence; far more of the poems of praise come toward the end. Furthermore, among the poems of blame, there is a slight but noticeable shift in emphasis from those that speak directly to the objects of their scorn and thus put the poet in their degrading company, to those that speak only about them and thus imagine an audience that shares the poet's values. The poet of the first half is still fighting his way free from base associations; he is angry and aggressive. The poet of the second half has made it. And where in the first half the scattered poems of praise commend mainly lower-ranking, private friends and relations, the far more numerous poems of praise in the second half concern many of the highest-ranking figures in England.
