This baby has been arranged to music for choir. Heard at "GMEA All State Men's Choir" It's a minor key.

  [Capo +2]
  (a c b g, &c)
  
      Am
  When I was one-and-twenty
      G               Am
  I heard a wise man say,
          F                    C
  "Give crowns and pounds and guineas
       E7             Am  
  But not your heart away;
  Give pearls away and rubies
  But keep your fancy free."
  But I was one-and-twenty
  No use to talk to me.
   
  When I was one-and-twenty
  I heard him say again,
  "The heart out of the bosom
  Was never given in vain;
  'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
  And sold for endless rue."
  And I am two-and-twenty
                           A
  And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.
  
  

[A.E. Housman, number XIII from A Shropshire Lad, 1986.

Alfred Edward Housman (26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936), usually known as A.E. Housman, was an English poet and classical scholar best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems were mostly written before 1900. Their wistful evocation of doomed youth in English countryside, their spare, strophic language and distinctive imagery appealed strongly to the Edwardian and Georgian English composers (beginning with Arthur Somervell) both before and after the First World War. Through their song-settings the poetry therefore became closely associated with that generation, and are undyingly associated with Shropshire itself.

In the first stanza, the speaker (even admitingly to himself) comes off as a brash youth: "I was one-and-twenty, / No use to talk to me" (line 7, 8.) But in the second stanza, Housman makes it clear that with age the speaker has gained maturity and learned a valuable lesson about life and love: "I am two-and-twenty, / And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true" (line 15, 16.)

This poem is very succinct, with meaning that goes well beyond the actual words written. Housman's use of money-language: "crowns, pounds, guineas, pearls, rubies, paid, and sold" all serve metaphorically towards the price each of us pays when gambling with love. The idea of money and currency is an interesting way to explain the trials of love. Overall, Housman's "When I Was One-and-Twenty" is a comical verse about the futility of love, youth, experience, and the irony in living life.]