Analysis on A.E. Housman´s Poem When I Was One- and - Twenty

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The concept of living and learning, is that an individual needs to live and make mistakes in order to learn and become wiser. Many people would acknowledge that they have learned more from the mistakes they have made then the advice they have received. This concept is demonstrated in A.E. Housman’s poem “When I Was One-and-Twenty.”
In this poem the speaker receives advice from a wise man on the topic of love. The speaker does not know the advice is true, until he experiences love for himself. Then he conceives how fatuous he was for not yielding to the advice he was given. A conceit, sentence structure, and repetition are used to convey the speaker’s thoughts and justify how advice, even from a wise man, can be diminutive compared to the lessons an individual can obtain from personal experiences.
The use of a conceit amid the advice given by the wise man allows the reader to metaphorically weigh their hearts against money and jewels. “Give crowns and pounds and guineas/ [b]ut not your heart away” (lines 3-4). In this line the man tells the speaker to relinquish all of his money bef...

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