A Glimpse of A. E. Houseman’s“When I was one-and-twenty”

Timothy Allender
English 121.511
October 23, 2002

A Glimpse of A. E. Houseman’s
“When I was one-and-twenty”

In his poem "When I was one-and-twenty" A. E. Houseman sketches for us, in two lighthearted octaves that nevertheless carry somber and sad overtones, an emotional portrait of a flawed romantic who at “one-and-twenty” was a provincial youth refusing to heed any advice contrary to his own desire. Herein, Houseman paints with words a mixed picture, both that of a headless youth and a romantic (if not misbegotten) hero; and by such contrasts and use of literary symbols Houseman weaves for us the rueful themes of the fleetingness of love and the decay of youth, the heart of which characterizes much of his poetic work.
Ambling along to the time of an iambic, hexametric rising rhythm with a catchy extra beat on every other line, Houseman saunters along through the emotional reminiscences of an eternal voice of youth in an arrangem...