The Laurel (Symbol)
The most important symbol in “To an Athlete Dying Young” is the laurel. Traditionally, the laurel wreath was awarded to athletic champions in ancient Greece and Rome. Housman, too, uses the laurel to symbolize fame. However, he also plays up the short-lived nature of the laurel plant itself. In the third stanza, he stresses that the laurel grows early (i.e., the young are most likely to achieve athletic fame), but also dies early (that fame tends to be short-lived). In the foreboding final stanza, Housman again refers to the runner’s “early-laurelled head.” The symbolic treatment of the laurel earlier in the poem tells the reader that the athlete’s fame in the afterlife is likely to be temporary.
The Threshold (Motif)
In the second stanza, Housman describes the townspeople bringing the dead runner to the “threshold.” The word may refer to the grave as a physical threshold between the surface and underground, but it also suggests the liminal space between life and death. Similar threshold imagery recurs in the penultimate stanza, where the speaker advises the runner to set his foot on the “sill of shade” and hold the challenge-cup up to the “low lintel.” The lintel is part of a door or window, and so is the sill. Thus, although the poem encourages the runner to accept death, the poem’s descriptions hesitate to go beyond the border between death and life. We suspect that when the runner passes the threshold and leaves life behind entirely, the speaker’s consolations may no longer apply.
