“When I Was One-and-Twenty” Summary

“When I Was One-and-Twenty” Themes

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  Youth, Naivety, and Experience

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• 

  Love and Pain

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “When I Was One-and-Twenty”

• Lines 1-4

  When I was one-and-twenty
         I heard a wise man say,
  “Give crowns and pounds and guineas
         But not your heart away;

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 5-8

  Give pearls away and rubies
         But keep your fancy free.”
  But I was one-and-twenty,
         No use to talk to me.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 9-14

  When I was one-and-twenty
         I heard him say again,
  “The heart out of the bosom
         Was never given in vain;
  ’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
         And sold for endless rue.”

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 15-16

  And I am two-and-twenty,
         And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

  

  

  

  

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“When I Was One-and-Twenty” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Alliteration

  

  

  

  

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• Assonance

  

  

  

  

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• Caesura

  

  

  

  

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• Enjambment

  

  

  

  

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• Repetition

  

  

  

  

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• Consonance

  

  

  

  

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• Metaphor

  

  

  

  

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“When I Was One-and-Twenty” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• One-and-twenty
• Crowns and pounds and guineas
• Keep your fancy free
• Bosom
• In vain
• Rue
• Two-and-twenty
• 'Tis

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “When I Was One-and-Twenty”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“When I Was One-and-Twenty” Speaker

“When I Was One-and-Twenty” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “When I Was One-and-Twenty”

More “When I Was One-and-Twenty” Resources

• External Resources

  • The Poem Out Loud — The poem read by Jason Shelton.

  • "The Invention of Love" — A clip from a play by Tom Stoppard, which imagines A.E. Housman visiting the classical underworld. 

  • Ezra Pound's Parody — In this poem, American modernist poet Ezra Pound mocks Housman's tendency towards "woe."  

  • "A Shropshire Lad" — The full text of Housman's most popular book of poems, from which "When I Was One-and-Twenty" is taken.

  • Housman's Life and Work — A valuable resource from the Poetry Foundation. 

• LitCharts on Other Poems by A. E. Housman

  • Loveliest of Trees

  • To an Athlete Dying Young