6th-century poet Ben Jonson highlights the innermost human emotion of loss and grievance throughout his works. He uses vices such as metaphor and personification to highlight the misfortunes of life as well as in contrast, the gifts in which human life can provide. Jonson’s poems within his 1616 folio, outline his intensely personal feelings of loss through his ability to convey to the readers the avoidance which follows tragedy and the attempt to devoid oneself of such an emotion, as it is too hard to bear. The cycle of life follows birth, growth, and death, with many unable to move past the death of loved ones, leaving them in a deep despair too hard to accept. In his poem On My First Son, this idea of the hardens of the heart to accept loss is further examined through the recounting of a father who has lost his young son. One way to treat the idea of loss is to try to devoid oneself of all feelings, without truly accepting what has happened. While alternatively, one can try to approach the loss with the concept that the child is in a better place now that he has passed, though this method seems to prove as fruitless as the concept of leaving behind his affection for the child is too hard to do. It is in the ending lines of the poem which one can see that the narrator has come to accept his undying love towards the child, and vows to not love the same ever again as a way to avoid the pain. This idea can be traced back to the often incapacity of the human psyche to accept loss – rather have themselves transform into a loveless being to avoid the feeling. By tapping into this specific human emotion and idea of love, one can recognize that behind the beauty conveyed through the expression of writing, lies a deeper psychological examination of the human mind. While the narrator is trying to suppress love and hold back the feeling to negate himself from loss, he is forgetting the core idea that it is better to have loved rather than to have not loved at all.

Finally, in John Keats’ work Ode to Autumn, the idea of love and the ever-present cycle of life can be seen in the beautiful expression of the seasons. Throughout the poetic work, Keats’ pays homage to the beauty of the seasons and the transformation from one season to the next. It is only through the deeper examination beyond the surface level that one can find what Keats is attempting to bring to the attention of the reader – being the permeance of the cycle of life. Keats glorifies the seasons of Autumn (being birth) and the beauty behi