The two poems, “ To Sir John Lade, on His Coming of Age” and “ When I Was One-and-Twenty” both explore the blissfulness of turning twenty one as well as the dangers that come with making your own mistakes. The two poems compare in that they both head warning signs about being an adult and about how being twenty one allows a person to be foolish. The two poems contrast in the sense that they both have different points of view and differ in tone towards coming of age and of being twenty one. The two poems both effectively use tone and point of view to convey the dangers of being an optimistic young adult.
Housman’s “When I Was One and Twenty” takes a personal reflection of being twenty one and the dangers of being your own man. In the first stanza Housman writes about “[hearing] a wise man say” (line 2) warnings of caution on throwing “...Crowns and pounds…” (line 3) away. Housman ends the stanza with a nostalgic …show more content…
Unlike Housman who compares the pitfalls of being twenty one to the heart and falling in love, Johnson compares being twenty one to money and how basically without money a person is nothing. Johnson begins by telling John Lade that he is “Loosened from the minors tether...” (line 5) reminding him that he is on his own. Johnson expresses acts of carpe diem in the first five stanzas of the poem he tells Lade to “…Show the spirit of an heir…” (line 12) and basically tells Sir John Lade to just spend his money. Then at the sixth stanza Johnson shifts from a carefree tone to a didactic and cynical tone towards spending all of a person’s worth and tells Sir John Lade that without his money he is nothing and “… [He] can hang or drown at last…” (line 28) Samuel Johnson’s poem uses a third person point of view to guide the reader through his views of irresponsible young