Human Life Span

Housman’s poem reveals a young speaker, who demonstrates that he’s read and believes in the trustworthiness of PSALM 90:10, when Moses discloses, “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away” (KJV). We know Housman’s speaker is still young, only 20 years old, because of the second stanza, which reads:

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

See also
“Life as a Tale”
“Life as a Tale 2”
“Valley of the Shadow of Death“