summery of perfect life by Ben Jonson
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What makes us better as people? What makes us happier or gives our transient moments of wakefulness a lasting significance? Jonson's poem, extracted from a longer Ode, offers a pithy reply one rooted in commonsense rather than irony, punning or stylistic innovation, but no less profound for that. He compares an old tree with a lily that blooms and fades in a day.
Jonson says that we're not made better by mere "bulk" or "standing long." In other words, earthly power is irrelevant and so is mere endurance. Even the "three hundred year" oak, so strong in its prime, becomes "dry, bald and sere." There may be an echo here of Jacques's famous Seven Ages of Man speech in Shakespeare's play "As You Like It." As Jacques describes the young soldier, "sudden and quick to quarrel" eventually becomes an old buffoon: "With spectacles on nose and pouch on side" and "his big manly voice, [turns] again toward childish treble"
The image of the tree chopped into firewood may symbolize being sacrificed to doing; beauty sacrificed to utilitarian purpose. Certainly, the next image brings to mind the Biblical injunction against needless work: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." The lily or Eastern lotus is a flame of quiet joy in a world of duty, distraction, and war.
As we read through the poem, we are drawn into a range of speculations. Do we prize use or beauty, quantity of time or quality? Could the tree represent the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden? By preferring the "lily" that "falls and dies" in one night, bringing to mind the fall of man and our entry into history, is Jonson suggesting that we are better off as outcasts from paradise? Although we so often long for utopia, once we got there we might well die of boredom. What reconciles time and eternity? Put together, the image of the "flower of light" and the notion that in "short measures life may perfect be" and we have a very good definition of an epiphany. This is a shining forth of reality. As Stephen Daedalus puts it in James Joyce's novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: "The three things requisite for beauty are integrity, a wholeness, symmetry and radiance. Its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance."
What shines forth for us, even in "small proportions," is the sight of "just beauties." Here "just" means correctly proportioned. It gestures toward the idea of there being some kind of unchanging and unchangeable mathematical law made manifest in the frailest thing, whether a tulip or a blade of grass, as well as the vast spiraling patterns of planets and galaxies.
Jonson's poem is, itself, justly proportioned. Woven together by rhyming couplets, it expands and contracts organically, sound and sense in one breath. The meter is iambic, with the beat falling on every second syllable, carrying us forward. The opening lines contain four beats, but as the poem describes the growing "three hundred year" tree, another beat is added. As our attention is brought to the fleeting "lily," the lines shorten to three beats. The poem then lengthens, until we end with an emphatic iambic pentameter. Through this varying meter, what might have seemed trite is given a more surprising, and thus more persuasive, lilt.
What do we conclude? Our four score years and ten are indeed a short measure in the music of time. Most of our time is wasted in doubt and pointless activity punctuated by tragedy: The crushed ambition, the silly squabble that turns into a family feud, and the agony of bereavement. Yet when we least expect it, there is a sudden moment of grace a moment that bathes the mystery of life in the light of perfection. It could be a look, a lightning flash, this poem
Jonson says that we're not made better by mere "bulk" or "standing long." In other words, earthly power is irrelevant and so is mere endurance. Even the "three hundred year" oak, so strong in its prime, becomes "dry, bald and sere." There may be an echo here of Jacques's famous Seven Ages of Man speech in Shakespeare's play "As You Like It." As Jacques describes the young soldier, "sudden and quick to quarrel" eventually becomes an old buffoon: "With spectacles on nose and pouch on side" and "his big manly voice, [turns] again toward childish treble"
The image of the tree chopped into firewood may symbolize being sacrificed to doing; beauty sacrificed to utilitarian purpose. Certainly, the next image brings to mind the Biblical injunction against needless work: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." The lily or Eastern lotus is a flame of quiet joy in a world of duty, distraction, and war.
As we read through the poem, we are drawn into a range of speculations. Do we prize use or beauty, quantity of time or quality? Could the tree represent the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden? By preferring the "lily" that "falls and dies" in one night, bringing to mind the fall of man and our entry into history, is Jonson suggesting that we are better off as outcasts from paradise? Although we so often long for utopia, once we got there we might well die of boredom. What reconciles time and eternity? Put together, the image of the "flower of light" and the notion that in "short measures life may perfect be" and we have a very good definition of an epiphany. This is a shining forth of reality. As Stephen Daedalus puts it in James Joyce's novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: "The three things requisite for beauty are integrity, a wholeness, symmetry and radiance. Its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance."
What shines forth for us, even in "small proportions," is the sight of "just beauties." Here "just" means correctly proportioned. It gestures toward the idea of there being some kind of unchanging and unchangeable mathematical law made manifest in the frailest thing, whether a tulip or a blade of grass, as well as the vast spiraling patterns of planets and galaxies.
Jonson's poem is, itself, justly proportioned. Woven together by rhyming couplets, it expands and contracts organically, sound and sense in one breath. The meter is iambic, with the beat falling on every second syllable, carrying us forward. The opening lines contain four beats, but as the poem describes the growing "three hundred year" tree, another beat is added. As our attention is brought to the fleeting "lily," the lines shorten to three beats. The poem then lengthens, until we end with an emphatic iambic pentameter. Through this varying meter, what might have seemed trite is given a more surprising, and thus more persuasive, lilt.
What do we conclude? Our four score years and ten are indeed a short measure in the music of time. Most of our time is wasted in doubt and pointless activity punctuated by tragedy: The crushed ambition, the silly squabble that turns into a family feud, and the agony of bereavement. Yet when we least expect it, there is a sudden moment of grace a moment that bathes the mystery of life in the light of perfection. It could be a look, a lightning flash, this poem
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Perfect life by Ben Jonson.
Explanation:
- The story ''Perfect life'' is written by Ben Jonson.
- He shows the point which makes us better human and how we can spend a good life.
- The poet says that we are not made perfect.
- It is the earth which makes us better by the lessons that we learn in it.
- He said that sacrifice makes us perfect because only after losing the loved ones we get to know the worth of everything.
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