This week’s choice is Part VIII of “A Shropshire Lad” by A.E. Housman and is generally known as “When I Was One-and-Twenty”.
“Give crowns and pounds and guineas
A.E. Housman (1859—1936)
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.”
Poem 435. A Shropshire Lad VIII: When I Was One-and-Twenty
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.
This poem is written from the viewpoint of a 22-year-old reflecting on the wisdom of an older person who advised them a year ago not to fall in love “But keep your fancy free”—the younger person, as we all may have done in our youth, disregarded this advice and presumably fell in love with another. A year later, they are regretting their choice though it isn’t clear whether this is because the object of their affections has rejected them or if they have gone where the narrator of the poem cannot follow.
It neatly encapsulates the sudden passion we may feel for another when we are young, the sharp pain we may feel in loss or refusal and the short time in which bliss may turn to regret. The crowns and guineas from the first stanza are old British coins (we still have the pound, of course) and the rubies and pearls accentuate the forcefulness of the sage’s words: give all your valuables away but keep your heart to yourself.
I like the editorial comments: “But I was one-and-twenty,/No use to talk to me.” We are inclined to be deaf to well-meant advice when we first fall in love (and not only then) and the sharp pangs we feel when that love ends are indeed “paid with sighs a-plenty”—the heart has indeed been exchanged for “endless rue” (regret, as in rueful).
I chose this poem because it is another one that Jesse Gilbert has set to music but there is also a reading by Robert Sean Leonard which is pretty good.
