WHEN I AM ONE AND

TWENTY

BY A . E . HOUSMAN

OUTLINE

I. INTRODUCTION:1. THE AUTHOR – A. E.

HOUSMAN:2. THE WORK – WHEN I AM ONE

AND TWENTY:II. INTERPRETATION:

1. STANZA 1:2. STANZA 2:

I. INTRODUCTION:

1. THE AUTHOR – A. E. HOUSMAN:

• Alfred Edward Housman (26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936), usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad.

• Housman was one of the foremost classicists of his age and has been ranked as one of the greatest scholars who ever lived. He established his reputation publishing as a private scholar and, on the strength and quality of his work, was appointed Professor of Latin at University College London and then at Cambridge. His editions of Juvenal, Manilius and Lucan are still considered authoritative.

Early Life

A.E. Housman was born on March 26, 1859, in Fockbury, Worcestershire, England.

He was the eldest of seven children born to Edward Housman, a solicitor, and Sarah Jane Housman (née Williams).

A year after his birth, his family moved to nearby Bromsgrove, where he spent his childhood.

His mother died from cancer when he was just 12 years old.

In 1877 Housman attended St. John's College in Oxford, where he received first class honors in classical moderations.

For the next 11 years Housman worked as a clerk in the Patent Office. In his spare time he studied Greek and Roman classics in detail.

Fockbury House, where Housman grew up.

A. E. Housman at the age of eighteen

Clemence Housman (AEH’s younger sister)

Laurence Housman (AEH’s younger brother)

Personal Life

Although Housman experienced success as a scholar and a poet, he was known as a recluse who rejected honors and avoided attention. He never married, as he was gay, though he did fall in love with his Oxford roommate Moses Jackson. They worked together during Housman's time at the Patent Office until Jackson left for India to work as headmaster of a school. Eighteen months later, to Housman's shock, Jackson came home to get married and didn't even invite Housman to the wedding. It is believed that Housman wrote Last Poems for Jackson, who read it before he died in 1922.

Moses Jackson

Career Success

In 1892 Housman became the Chair of Latin at University College, London. Housman's first poetry volume, A Shropshire Lad (1896), was based on classical and traditional models; its lyrics expressed a romantic pessimism in a spare, simple style, and it gradually grew popular. These poems focused on themes of pastoral beauty, unrequited love, fleeting youth, grief, death and patriotism.

Throughout 1903-1930 he edited the works of Marcus Manilius, a first-century Roman astronomer–this major scholarly effort gained him respect and fame. During these years Housman worked in other capacities, including as a Kennedy Professor of Latin in Cambridge and a fellow of Trinity College in 1911. At mealtimes he spent time with other notable influencers of his period, such as the philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and fellow poet Gertrude Stein. His second and last volume of poetry, Last Poems (1922), met with much success.

After Housman's death in 1936, his brother Laurence published third and fourth volumes of his work, called respectively More Poems and Complete Poems (1939).

Death and Legacy

Housman's last years were spent at a nursing home in Cambridge, England, where he died in his sleep on April 30, 1936. Housman was buried in Ludlow, England. His works were not forgotten after his passing: A Housman Society was dedicated to him in England, and dozens of composers, such as George Butterworth and Ralph Vaughan Williams, set his poems to their music. Numerous works have been named after or otherwise inspired by AE Housman. Nobel laureate Patrick White took the title of his 1955 novel, The Tree of Life, from a Housman poem. Peter O'Donnell alluded to lines of a Housman poem with the title of his 1969 thriller, A Taste for Death, which in turn inspired PD James' eponymous novel, published in 1986. Housman himself is the protagonist of Thomas Stoppard's 1997 play The Invention of Love. And the James Bond film Die Another Day takes its title from Housman's poetry.

TIMELINE

TIME EVENT

Mar 26, 1859 A. E. Housman was born.

Sep 1, 1877 He earned an open scholarship St. Johns college in Oxford where he studied classics. He was the first class Honors In classics in 1879.

He met Moses Jackson – who was his roommate. They became close-friends. Eventually, Housman fell in love with Jackson. Jackson, being a heterosexual, did not reciprocate.

Jan 1, 1879 to Jan 1,1892

Jackson set up a job for Housman at the patent office. Housman worked there until he was offered a job as a professor. All the while he was working independently on his study of classics and writing poems.

TIME EVENT

Jan 1, 1892 His independent work on the classics gradually earned him a reputation and he was offered a job as a Latin professor at the University College of London. He accepted.

Jan 1, 1896 After the death of his friend - Adalbert Jackson - , Housman published his first collection of poetry at his own expense.

Most of the poems revolve around themes of early death, sadness and nostalgic depictions of rural life.

Jan 1, 1903 to Jan 1, 1930

Housman studied the works of Marcus Manilius, a Roman astronomer. His annotated version of Marcus's work earned him acclaim as a scholar, and it became the authoritative version of the time.

Jan 1, 1922 His final collection of poetry was published. Many historians think Housman published them for Jackson.

TIME EVENT

Apr 30, 1936 Housman died at the age of 77 in his sleep in a hospital in Cambridge.

Jan 1, 1939 Housman's brother, Lawrence, published the "Complete Poems“.

2. THE WORK – WHEN I AM ONE AND TWENTY:

• When I Was One-and-Twenty, or Poem XIII, is the informal name of an untitled poem by A. E. Housman, published in A Shropshire Lad in 1896.

• It is the thirteenth in a cycle of 63 poems.

• As one of Housman's most familiar poems, it is untitled but often anthologized under a title taken from its first line.

When I was one-and-twentyI heard a wise man say,‘Give crowns and pounds and guineasBut not your heart away;

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

When I was one-and-twentyI heard him say again,‘The heart out of the bosomWas never given in vain;’Tis paid with sighs a plentyAnd sold for endless rue.’And I am two-and-twenty,And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

Theme :Morality.

Meter :The poem uses Iambic

tetramemter with some catalexis in the end of

foot of the line.

Stanza lines : Octave

The structure : The poem consists of two stanzas, each stanza consists of 8 lines.

II. INTERPRETATION:

When I was one-and-twentyI heard a wise man say,

‘Give crowns and pounds and guineasBut not your heart away;

Give pearls away and rubiesBut keep your fancy free.’But I was one-and-twenty,

No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twentyI heard him say again,

‘The heart out of the bosomWas never given in vain;

’Tis paid with sighs a plentyAnd sold for endless rue.’

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

STANZA 1(Line 1 – 8)

STANZA 2(Line 9 – 16)

When I was one-and-twentyI heard a wise man say,

‘Give crowns and pounds and guineasBut not your heart away;

Give pearls away and rubiesBut keep your fancy free.’But I was one-and-twenty,

No use to talk to me.

This poem begins with the speaker recounting the advice given to him from a wise man. Housman’s use of “one-and-twenty” (line 1) instead of twenty-one contributes to the

lyrical style of the poem as well as the assonance “Give crowns and pounds and guineas” (line 3), and alliteration “But keep your fancy free” (line 6).

Advice given to a youth is a notice in the form of a warning, which makes the poem’s imagery and emotions more immediate. A wise person can be thought to be one who has already experienced the pain of a lost or unrequited love. The inherent message in the warning is that though you need money to buy food and shelter “Give crowns and pounds and guineas, / But not your heart away; / Give pearls away and rubies / But keep your fancy free” (line 3-6.), it

would be better to go without these material objects that keep us alive than to suffer in love.

This poem conveys the message that a person in love is not free, that one must avoid giving their heart to another in order to keep their “fancy free” (line 6). The speaker’s use of “but” in “But I was one-and-twenty, / No use to talk to me” (line 7-8) denotes

his realization of his youthfulness, thus foreshadowing a later fact.

1. STANZA 1:

The second stanza begins with a repetition of the first line of the poem “When I was one-

and-twenty” (line 9), denoting that the second stanza will be a continuation of the ideas first presented in the first stanza. The speaker tells

us that he was warned more than once “I heard him say again” (line 10) substantiates

this notion.

On the one hand, Houseman uses the word “paid” in line 13, continuing the imagery of material objects in contrast

with love - nothing is harder to give away than one’s heart “The heart out of the bosom / Was never given in vain /

Tis paid with sighs a plenty / And sold for endless rue” (line 11-14). Falling in love,

on the other hand, does take one’s freedom, and therefore leaves a person

in misery, or “endless rue” (line 14).

The final line of the poem Housman completes the speaker’s monologue

with the wise man’s warnings. Ironically, just one year older “And I am two-and-twenty” (line 15) and apparently now more experienced,

speaker suggests the intensity of the woe and sorrow felt, while begins his expression with the word “Oh” (line

16) and repeats the phrase “’Tis true, ‘tis true” (line 16).

The second stanza is also an advice from a wise man but this is not referring to the material things

that might ruin one's life. It's more of moral advices and there are

lines that remind us how to deal with our emotions. We should live

our lives to the fullest but not to the extent that we violate the

rights of others.

2. STANZA 2:

When I was one-and-twentyI heard him say again,

‘The heart out of the bosomWas never given in vain;

’Tis paid with sighs a plentyAnd sold for endless rue.’

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

Both stanzas are very similar. They are talking of the same subject and using similar language. However, in the first stanza, the speaker comes off as a brash youth “I was one-and-twenty, / No use to talk to me” (line 7-8)

while in the second stanza, Housman makes it clear that with age the speaker has gained maturity and learned a valuable lesson about life and

love “I am two-and-twenty, / And oh, ‘tis true, ‘tis true” (line 15-16).

The idea of money is an interesting way to explain the trials of love, using money-language: “crowns, pound, guineas, pearls, rubies, paid and sold”.

Nevertheless, a young man, according to the “wise man” must guard against having his life taken over by his material possessions and other’s

opinions, but his mental and emotional life.

This poem is very succinct, with meaning that goes well beyond the actual words written. Housman’s use of money-language: “crowns, pounds, guineas, pearls, rubies, paid, and sold” all serve metaphorically towards the price each of us pays when gambling with love. The idea of money and currency is an interesting way to explain the trials of love. Overall, Housman’s “When I Was One-and-Twenty” is a comical verse about the futility of love, youth, experience, and the irony in living life.The advice the speaker is given is to give away almost anything, with “crowns and pounds and guineas,” and “pearls and rubies” symbolizing any material object, before he gives away his heart/love.

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