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A famous poem by A. E. Housman that reflects on the fleeting glory and mortality of youth. The poem contrasts the triumphant celebration of a young runner's victory with the sad fate of his early death and the fading of his laurels.
- Summary
- Themes
- Structure
- Literary Devices
- Detailed Analysis
In this poem, the speakerbegins by recalling a young athlete who won a small-town race. He was celebrated by everyone around him. Now, in the present, the athlete is being celebrated in a very different way. He’s died and is being carried back home. He died gloriously and the speaker seems to praise him for it. The speaker follows this up by provid...
There are several important themes to take note of in this poem. These include youth, glory, death, and fear. These are all linked together through the life and death of this young man and the speaker’s contemplation of him. There is an implicit fear of death in the speaker’s depiction of the young man’s early death. He dwells on what has been lost...
‘To an Athlete Dying Young’ by A. E. Housman is an elegiac poem that is made up of seven, four-line stanzas. These are known as quatrains. The quatrains follow a simple rhyme schemeof AABB CCDD and so on, changing end sounds from stanza to stanza. These seven stanzas can be further separated into three sections. The first contains a memory of the p...
Housman makes use of several literary devices in ‘To an Athlete Dying Young’. These include but are not limited to alliteration, enjambment, and apostrophe. Apostrophe is an arrangement of words addressing someone, something, or creature, that does not exist, or is not present, in the poem’s immediate setting. The exclamation, “Oh,” is often used a...
Stanza One
In the first stanza of ‘To an Athlete Dying Young,’ the speaker begins by addressing a memory that he has of a young athlete. This person was a champion in his small town. When he was a runner he won a specific, important race and people carried him through the streets celebrating. “We brought you home shoulder-high,” the speaker recalls. The “we” is the speaker and all the townspeople collectively, while “you” is the young man to whom the poem is addressed. This first stanza, as well as all...
Stanza Two
In the second stanza of this poem, the speaker takes the reader out of the past and to “today“. There was another procession, but this time it was for a very different reason, the young man has passed away. While this is not revealed until the third stanza, it’s very clear that something is changed through the use of the phrase a “stiller town“. This alludes to the fact that the young man’s presence has made the town less than what it was before. A reader should also take note of the use of a...
Stanza Three
It’s in the third stanza of ‘To an Athlete Dying Young’ that the youth’s death is revealed. The speaker refers to him as a “smart lad“. It is not entirely clear why this is the case, but the fact that the speaker immediately refers to the young man’s ability to “slip betimes away” is interesting. It could suggest that the speaker feels that this boy was smart to die. This also raises the possibility that the young man committed suicide or that it was in someway a conscious decision to die. Th...
- Female
- October 9, 1995
- Poetry Analyst And Editor
"To an Athlete Dying Young" is an elegiac poem by the British Victorian poet A.E. Housman, originally published in his bestselling collection Shropshire Lad (1896). The poem focuses on a funeral held for an athlete who, as the title suggests, has died young.
A famous poem by A. E. Housman that celebrates the glory and the fate of a young runner who died too soon. Read the full text, analysis and context of this classic work on Poets.org.
To An Athlete Dying Young Lyrics. The time you won your town the race. We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high....
A famous poem by A.E. Housman that reflects on the fleeting glory of youth and the inevitability of death. The poem contrasts the triumphant reception of a young runner after a race with his humble and silent fate after his death.
To an Athlete Dying Young. A. E. Housman. The time you won your town the race. We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. Today, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home,
