When I was One-and-Twenty Analysis

Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you travel any further, please know that there may be some thorny academic terminology ahead. Never fear, Shmoop is here. Check out our...

Almost Ballad StanzasDivided into two eight-line stanzas, this poem follows traditional ballad rhyme schemes: the stanzas each break neatly in half, with the second and fourth lines of each group r...

When it comes right down to it, our speaker has the emotional maturity of a fifth grader. Sure, being twenty-one nowadays means you're pretty much an adult. You can drive, you can vote, and now the...

Frankly, we're not all that sure where this poem is set – and that's largely because our speaker doesn't go about the business of writing love poems in any traditional way. We don't get any c...

If they made nursery rhymes for high school-ers, we're pretty sure that they would sound a lot like this. With the oh-so-catchy rhyme scheme and cleverly repeated phrases, this poem is actually pre...

Well, we hate to point it out, but the "title" of this poem is actually the first line of the poem. Chances are that the poem, which appeared in a collection of poems by Housman entitled "A Shropsh...

Self-Deprecating SillinessHousman may actually mourn the loss of love – but he never lets his speakers tackle problems like love or loss or sadness with anything other than a light, sardonic...

(1) Sea LevelWelcome to the cake walk of poems. Come to think of it, we're not really sure why cake walks are easy. In fact, we're not even really sure what cake walks are. But they sound fairly pl...

Housman may have been everyone's favorite rural poet, but he was also a city boy with a broken heart. See, he was in love with his college roommate, but the college roommate didn't return the love....

GThe speaker's discussion of the "heart" never gets past first base. Heck, we're not sure he even gets off the plate in the first place!