“To an Athlete Dying Young” is one of the most famous poems by the English poet A. E. Housman. Houseman wrote at the tail end of the nineteenth century. He wrote poetry as a hobby, and his primary occupation was as a scholar of the classics, with a particular focus on the notoriously dry and academic process of textual editing. However, his poetry was emotional and often tragic, with some readers criticizing it as sentimental and self-pitying.
His first and most famous book, A Shropshire Lad, has been consistently popular with readers, and has never gone out of print. The poems are written from a rural perspective. Some speakers are directly involved in the events of their poems while others, like that of “To an Athlete,” are more distant onlookers.
“To an Athlete” has been particularly interesting to critics because it is more clearly ironic than some of Housman’s other poems. Although the theme of a triumphant runner dying young is characteristically melodramatic, the speaker’s attempt to comfort him by arguing that death is preferable to living long enough to lose one’s fame falls flat. The poem also embodies Housman’s famously stripped-down style. The meter and rhyme scheme are both extremely pronounced, pushing the reader to hear the bare sound of the poem as loudly as its themes.
