2010B FRQ #1
Post date: Jan 21, 2014 2:47:0 AM
(Suggested time—40 minutes. This question counts as one-third of the total essay section score.)
Each of the two poems below is concerned with a young man at the age of twenty-one, traditionally the age of
adulthood. Read the two poems carefully. Then write a well-organized essay in which you compare and contrast
the poems, analyzing the poetic techniques, such as point of view and tone, that each writer uses to make his point
about coming of age.
To Sir John Lade, on His Coming of Age
(‘A Short Song of Congratulation’)
Long-expected one and twenty
Lingering year at last is flown,
Pomp and pleasure, pride and plenty,
Great Sir John, are all your own.
5 Loosened from the minor’s tether,
Free to mortgage or to sell,
Wild as wind, and light as feather,
Bid the slaves of thrift farewell.
Call the Bettys, Kates, and Jennys,
10 Every name that laughs at care,
Lavish of your grandsire’s guineas,
Show the spirit of an heir.
All that prey on vice and folly
Joy to see their quarry fly,
15 Here the gamester light and jolly,
There the lender grave and sly.
Wealth, Sir John, was made to wander,
Let it wander as it will;
See the jockey, see the pander,
20 Bid them come, and take their fill.
When the bonny blade carouses,
Pockets full, and spirits high,
What are acres? What are houses?
Only dirt, or wet or dry.
25 If the guardian or the mother
Tell the woes of wilful waste,
Scorn their counsel and their pother,*
You can hang or drown at last.
1780 —Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
When I Was One-and-Twenty
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
5 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
10 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.’
15 And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.
1896 —A. E. Housman (1859–1936)