Money-Lending Imagery
The speaker of "On My First Son" imagines family as a kind of financial arrangement. God or Heaven lends the speaker his son for a time (in this case, just seven years). After that time has expired...
Sin and Punishment Imagery
The speaker implies early in the poem that he is somehow responsible for his son's death. He says he had "too much hope" for his son, and that this was his "sin" (2). The language of punishment is...