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.

These lines come from Ben Jonson’s epitaph on his eldest son, Benjamin Jonson, who died in childhood (aged seven) in 1603. The poem belongs to Jonson’s group of short, lapidary “epigrams,” many of which adapt classical models for public inscription and private grief. Written at the start of James I’s reign, the epitaph reflects a period when mortality—especially of children—was a common domestic reality, yet Jonson’s treatment is strikingly personal. By calling the child his “best piece of poetry,” Jonson fuses paternal love with the language of artistic creation, turning a funerary inscription into an intimate meditation on loss and restraint.

The epitaph compresses grief into a controlled, almost paradoxical compliment: Jonson’s finest “poem” is not a text but his child. The lines ask the passerby to identify the grave and then pivot to a moral resolution—Jonson’s “vows” will be tempered so that what he loves will never be loved “too much.” The closing thought registers a stoic impulse: to guard the heart against future devastation by moderating attachment. Yet the very act of writing the epitaph undermines that stoicism, revealing how profound the love already was. The poem’s power lies in this tension between emotional intensity and disciplined expression.

1) “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.”
2) “Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say, Here doth lie / Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry…”