Housman’s Sage Advice

‘When I was one-and-twenty’

Oct 25, 2007

In A. E. Housman's "When I was one-and-twenty," the speaker at age twenty-two reports the truth of sage advice he received at age twenty-one about falling in love.

A. E. Housman’s lyric, “When I was one-and-twenty,” consists of two rimed stanzas of eight lines each. The rime scheme is ABCBCDAD in the first stanza and ABCBADAD in the second stanza. This poem appears in his collection titled A Shropshire Lad, along with “Is my team ploughing,” “Loveliest of trees," and “To an athlete dying young.”

First Stanza: “When I was one-and-twenty”

The speaker begins his portrayal by quoting what he “heard a wise man say”; the sage pontificated that it is fine to give money to a sweetheart, but a young man should not give her his heart: "Give crowns and pounds and guineas / But not your heart away.” It is unclear in the poem whether this advice had been directed solely to the speaker or whether the speaker merely overheard the “wise man” speaking to others.

Nevertheless, the speaker further reports that the sage also said it was fine to give away “pearls and rubies,” as long as one did not, at the same time, give away one’s own judgment. A young man, according to the “wise man” must guard against having his life taken over by another—not his material possessions, however, but his mental and emotional life.

The speaker then says that at such as young age, he was not open to sage advice: “But I was one-and-twenty, / No use to talk to me.” Like most young people, this speaker disdains sage advice. He will live life as he chooses, and pay hell later, if necessary.

Second Stanza: “When I was one-and-twenty / I heard him say again”

The second stanza further reports information the speaker received from this same wise man. The sage had declared that giving one’s heart away or falling in love and coming under the influence of another was never done without consequences. Of course, most people believe those consequences are positive and worth the effort, but according to this wise man, losing one’s heart to another merely causes pain and sorrow: “'Tis paid with sighs a plenty / And sold for endless rue."

And the speaker at age twenty-two has suffered by paying those plenty sighs, and he rues the day he failed to take the sage advice.