When I was One-and-Twenty Youth Quotes

We hear that our speaker is 21 three times. That's an awful lot of space in a poem that's only sixteen lines long! Any time that a phrase is repeated so often, chances are that it's pivotal to the work of the poem.

Silly, silly young lad. This sort of comment is the type that no one could make in the present tense – it's the kind of self-reflection that's just a little bit self-deprecating. Plus, it's just oozing with irony and condescension for the man that he was. Good thing he's changed, huh?

Why call yourself one-and-twenty instead of twenty-one? It's for this line, folks. See, when the big change (his birthday) rolls around, putting the "two" in front of the twenty makes it super-clear that it's the ONE YEAR difference that causes such a huge shift in his perspective. After all, twenty-one looks a lot like twenty-two. But "two-and-twenty"? Everyone can see how different that is!