The speaker looks back at being twenty-one, when he was already full of aches, gout, fever, and gum disease, and was told he would be dead by twenty-two. Now that he is twenty-two, he admits those earlier troubles were nothing compared to what he feels now. But he doesn’t stop there: even his current pains seem small when he imagines the troubles waiting at twenty-three. The poem turns physical suffering and aging into a running, exaggerated joke. The speaker’s tone is wry and self-mocking rather than truly despairing. He shrugs at his body’s decline, almost amused that each year promises to be worse than the last. The mood is playful, darkly comic, and deliberately over the top.
When I Was One and Twenty — Summary
When I was one and twenty. My ills were in their prime. With aches and pains aplenty. And gout before my time; I had the pyorrhea, And fever turned me blue— They said that I would be a Dead man at twenty-two.
Now I am two and twenty. The aches and pains I thought Were miseries aplenty, Compared to these, are naught;
And even these are bubbles, That scarce can worry me, When I regard the troubles I'll have at twenty-three.