When I Was One-and-Twenty, an analysis.

This paper has been conceived to analyze the poem called When I Was One-and-Twenty written by Alfred E Housman subscribed to the last century. As a matter of fact, it seeks to interpret, embarking upon an own perspective, a sense framed in the British Literature. By getting started analyzing When I Was One-and-Twenty it must be done a quick examination of the formal aspects. This is not a long poem and it is divided into two stanzas. The poem behaves an irregular rhyme due to the fact it does not follow a pattern. Its pattern is: a-b-c-b-c-d-a-a. Nevertheless, it presents a sort of intonation, since the rhythm is achieved by the four accented syllables contained in the first and the third line, whereas the second and the four include three, giving the impression of a song; this is well known as ballad stanza. Therefore, the meter is iambic tetrameter in the first, third, fifth and seventh lines, and trimeter in the second, fourth, sixth and eighth lines. Regarding the structural part, the poem is, presumably, told from the point of view of a young lad who recalls in the first stanza a piece of advice not taken. In the second stanza the adviser repeated the advice, and the young man realized it was actually true. Bearing this structural organization in mind, it ought to be clarified that at the beginning of the poem the tense used is the past, and by the end of it the tense shifted strongly to the present. Hence, the poem it is developed into two episodes, the advise and the epiphany.

The tone, therefore, experiences a transformation from the opening lines to closing ones. One may observe the way the speaker, who is the receiver, begins telling the story mentioning his age and qualifying the adviser through various adjectives. The advice involves commands as well as comparisons between the material world /crowns, pounds and guineas/ and love. Seemingly, this is a vivid memory that he can reproduce by using the same words placing a great emphasis on the rue. Moreover, the speaker repeats some words /when I was one and twenty/, alters the syntax and introduces old fashion vocabulary in order to increase the impact of his remembrances. Eventually, the tone dramatically falls into a realization. Platonic love, as it is treated here, does not exist and it truly hurts. Modernity has condemned human kind to relegate their feelings to the attic of the insensibility replacing them by means of the material stuff. The judicious adviser calls the speakers attention by warning him not to give confidence, desires and blind trust (platonic love) as long as the consequence is likely to be woe and gloom. What it is a point to be discussed is the conception of the real love that it is presented across these lines, such assumption has been ratified by the end of the poem when the speaker in such epiphany realizes that indeed he is paying the price of having loved /and oh, tis true, tis true/ Love is portrayed as a tenebrous state of human race which is the opposite of the platonic love.

What gets a matter of debate is the cruel revelation of love when someone grows up. Naturally, the speaker was nave in the sense he had never thought of love as something malicious and damaging. Love, clearly could be understood, under age, as the premises said by the platonic love. This platonic love seeks to reveal and demonstrate the majesty of the human nature and its transcendental phenomena manifesting the pure essence of beauty per se; it is an idealized, perfect love. Love by love. Having considered that, the speakers realization consists of a new picture. Love is depicted, viewed through the eyes of wisdom, merely as the result of the passing of time, strengthened where modernity consumes human candle, where it is advisable to give everything except love in exchange; a currency swap. As a final note I must assert that such conception of love tends to approach to modernity, so that by analogy, to the repentance as well; whereas platonic love seems to near, ad infinitum, to a dream.
Uchuvo G. Yesid A. Cod: 2008134057
Universidad Pedaggica Nacional De Colombia. Faculty of Humanities Languages department B.A. in basic education with emphasis on humanities: SpanishEnglish Literature in English II