Poet's Corner
Explanation: "When I Was One-and-Twenty"
Lines 1-4
In the opening lines, the speaker begins his monologue by clearly
expressing that at the age of twenty-one he was warned, by a man the
speaker considered "wise," not to give his heart away. Notice that the
remembered warning is in the form of a quote, rather than a paraphrase,
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. Here, the wise person, who, we assume in his wisdom, also
knows the value of financial stability, and the attraction of money, has
warned the young speaker of the poem that being poor is better than
suffering the pain and despair of lost love — of living after having given
your very heart away. The images of the currency become a concrete
manifestation of the contrast between things of the heart and things of
the world. The inherent message in the warning is that though you need
money to buy food and shelter, it would be better to go without these
necessities that keep us alive than to suffer in love.
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Lines 5-6
Here the speaker continues to quote the wise man exactly, remembering
that he had warned the speaker to go even beyond giving away the standard
monetary currency of "crowns," "pounds," and "guineas"; to give precious
gems away, such as "pearls" and "rubies," rather than allow his "fancy,"
or love, to be restricted. This suggests that the heart is more precious
than gems, and ought to be guarded even more carefully. Use of the images
of "pearls" and "rubies" intensifies the emotional impact of the
remembered warning expressed through the images of the "crowns," "pounds,"
and "guineas" of the previous lines.
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Lines 7-8
In these lines, the speaker admits that when he was twenty-one he
wasn't in the habit of listening to or heeding lessons attempting to be
taught by someone of experience. There is an implication here that youth
not listening to those older or wiser is a universally understood concept.
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Lines 9-14
In this section of the poem, the speaker tells us that he was warned
more than once. Here, Housman uses the word "paid" in line 13 to continue
the imagery of monetary currency and gems in the previous stanza. The
impact that this has, perhaps, is to make us feel even more intensely that
there is always an exchange in life, that one can never get something for
nothing. In this instance, the price for giving up "fancy" and the heart
will be "endless rue," or sorrow. The new quotation marks at the beginning
of line 11 and the end of line 14 serve to magnify how exactly the speaker
remembers the second warning as well. By the end of the poem, we realize,
this quotation has probably had the effect of taking us more directly into
the speaker's agony by hearing the words even as he has gone over them in
his "rue."
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Lines 15-16
In the final lines of the poem Housman completes the speaker's
monologue in a simply and clearly expressed agreement with the wise man's
warnings. Just one year older, and apparently now experienced in the pain
of lost or unrequited love, he simply states "'tis true." However, he
begins his expression with the word "oh," and repeats the phrase "'tis
true," which suggests the intensity of the woe and sorrow felt, while
continuing the poem's musicality. Here, the conciseness and simplicity of
expression allow us, perhaps, to feel even more severely the impact of the
warnings contained above.
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Source: Exploring Poetry, Gale, 1997.