When I Was One-and-Twenty

When I Was One-and-Twenty is the first line of the untitled Poem XIII from A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad (1896), but has often been anthologised and given musical settings under that title.

It is the monologue of a young man of twenty-two who reflects on the truth of the advice given him a year before not to give his heart away in love.

Later the possibility that the poem refers to Housman's unrequited love for a fellow male student at university has been suggested.

[3] Two frequently performed versions are George Butterworth’s, from his Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad for medium high voice and piano (1911),[4] and Ivor Gurney’s from Ludlow and Teme (1919).

[5] The style of setting varies from the simplicity of the traditional tune fitted to it by Butterworth to the “chromatically overwrought” music of Arnold Bax.