When I am one and twenty by A.E.Housman.

1. WHEN I AM ONE AND
TWENTY
BY A . E . HOUSMAN

2. 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:

3. 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.

4. 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

5. Clemence Housman (AEH’s younger
sister)
Laurence Housman (AEH’s younger
brother)

6. 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

7. 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).

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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“.

12. 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.

13. When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
‘Give crowns and pounds and
guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.’
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
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.’
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.

14. II. INTERPRETATION:
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.’
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
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.’
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.
STANZA 1
(Line 1 – 8)
STANZA 2
(Line 9 – 16)

15. When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But 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:

16. 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-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.’
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

17. 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.

18. THANK YOU FOR LISTENING