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Sir John Lade On His Coming Of Age, By Samuel Johnson, And When I Was One And

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The two poems today are To Sir John Lade, on His Coming of Age, by Samuel Johnson, and When I Was One-and-Twenty, by A.E. Housman.The two poems presented talk about two young men who are 21 years old. They both talk about money but in two profoundly different ways. The first poem, To Sir John Lade, on His Coming of Age, talks about a young man who has just turned 21 and inherited his grandfather’s fortune. We know this from lines 11 and 12 “Lavish of your grandsire’s guineas,/Show the spirit of an heir.”. The first paragraph focuses on his coming of age and how he should enjoy it. It doesn’t mention money or the spending of money yet. The second paragraph starts to bring into the main subject of money with line 6 “Free to mortgage or to …show more content…

In paragraph 5 it moves away from how to spend your money to how money never stays with one person for too long. It is meant to be spent, mainly on gambling. It continues in line 6 about gambling, but bring up the reality of life; what about buying land, what about buying a house? Why don’t you settle down? In the last paragraph it talks about that regret of spending all your money, being in debt to people, gambling it all away. If you do that then you won’t live long, and will just end up as a tale mother’s tell their children about so they don’t follow after you. The second poem, When I was One-and-Twenty, talks about money in a different way. The first paragraph talks about when you’re 21 you should worry about spending money and having a carefree and wonderful time, not finding a girl and settling down. To “Keep your fancy free.’”(ln6) like not be committed, not worry about the girls. The second paragraph contradicts the first by reason of the old man who told him not to worry about the girls in the first paragraph is now telling him to worry about girls. He says that when you sell your heart to another, ensure it is the one who will not be in vain and be the one that causes you sigh all the time considering you are in love. That you spend the rest of your days together. As a 22 year old it all fits together and he understands it now. Both of these poems talks about selling and money and young men’s lives, but they are both unquestionably different.

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