Until around a century ago many children died without reaching adulthood. A couple might have seven children and five or even all of them die. It’s still the case in some low-income countries. The death of a child now is a catastrophe, even though children may be more comfortable with death than adults, but we may think that grief wasn’t as severe for parents when child death was much commoner. These two show that we’d be wrong.

Ben Johnson (1572-1637) is called the “the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare during the reign of James I.” (Christopher Marlow was dead by the time James I came to the throne.) He was also a poet, and I encounter often the poem he wrote on the death of his seven-year-old son. It’s a simple but very powerful poem.

The poem by Wordsworth (1770-1850)  is not a poem at all but an extract from a letter he wrote about the death of his son. The poem is read often at funerals, particularly those of the young, because, I suspect, of these positive last lines: 

“In surrendering such a treasure 

I feel a thousand times richer 

Than if I had never possessed it.”

These two poems can be almost unbearable to read, but read them we must.

On my First Son by Ben Johnson

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.

I loved the boy by William Wordsworth

I loved the Boy with the utmost love 

Of which my soul is capable, 

And he is taken from me – 

Yet in the agony of my spirit 

In surrendering such a treasure 

I feel a thousand times richer 

Than if I had never possessed it.