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.
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.
The speaker in this poem is Ben Jonson, as a father. The situation is the loss of his son's life.
This poem's meaning to me is filled with loss, grieving, and sorrow. I see the father mourning over his son's death at a young age, and how he is filled with anguish because fatherhood has been stolen from his life. I get this meaning because the poem opens up with a goodbye to the son ("Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy."). I see that Ben is losing someone, and the idea of a friend or family comes to mind. In line 5, "Oh, could I lose all father now" tells me that he was a father, and the loss is that of his son. I also pick up a clash of envy and confusion in lines 6 and 7. "To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage, " is referring to escaping the pain of the world, and the pain that life can bring. Line 6 "..lament the state he should envy..." is where the art of confusion comes in. In other words, Jonson is saying why shouldn't we envy the son for being able to leave this world? Or why can't we be happy for those who don't have to walk life's rocky road? He obviously can't, and I think it is because of moral, and societies expectations of grieving over a loss.