To an Athlete Dying Young Literary Elements

The poem is written in the first-person plural, by a speaker who is a member of the runner's community. He was there when he won the first race, and accompanied him to his burial. However, he also takes a distant perspective, cooly advising the runner to see the value of his own death, rather than lamenting the loss.

The poem is written in four-line stanzas, or quatrains, rhymed AABB. Most lines are eight syllables and written in iambic meter, or by alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. Some lines, however, begin on a stressed syllable. See, for example, "Man and boy stood cheering by."

Throughout the poem, Housman employs metaphor to speak about death. In the second stanza, he describes the afterlife as a "town," and the athlete's death as a step over the threshold into that new place. In the fifth stanza he uses a similar architectural metaphor, describing the athlete as stepping into the shade and hoisting his trophy aloft in that new place. In the fourth stanza, he describes death itself as a "shady night."

Housman using frequent alliteration, including /r/ in line 5, "today, the road all runners come," /t/ in line 8, "townsman of a stiller town," /f/ in line 10, "from fields where glory," and /g/ in the final line, "the garland briefer than a girl's."

The poem urges the runner not to lament his early death, because in fact it has protected him from the slow humilation of losing his fame and growing old. Yet, as the final stanza suggests, the renown he will earn in death will be just as ephemeral.

Eulogy

Rural England

Wry, mournful

The protagonist is the athlete, and the antagonist is time.

The major conflict is between the vitality and triumph of the protagonist, and the inevitable march of time. Had the youth stayed alive, time would have nevertheless stolen his victory, leaving his name dead "before the man." By dying, the athlete escapes this fate, and yet as the last stanza suggests, he cannot escape the inevitability of loss.

The climax comes in the penultimate stanza, when the speaker reaches the end of his argument in favor of death and urges the runner to embrace his fate.

In the third stanza, Housman writes that the laurel grows early but withers quicker than the rose. In the final stanza, he returns to the laurel, again emphasizing that it has grown "early" on the athlete's head. Although the dead men celebrate the "unwithered" laurel on the runner's head, the third stanza foreshadows that its early green will not last forever.

Throughout the poem, Housman employs understatement to refer to death. He describes it as a town or a dark and shady place, which makes it feel knowable in terms of our everyday reality.

The final stanza likely alludes to Homer's depiction of the afterlife in the Odyssey, in which the dead crave the strength of Odysseus, and Achilles, the great athlete, expresses hatred of the dead.

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In the third stanza, Housman personifies the "shady night" and the "earth" of the grave, depicting them closing the boy's eyes and shutting his ears.

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