The Ephemerality of Fame
In “To an Athlete Dying Young,” Housman casts fame as inherently short-lived. The poem begins by describing the day when the runner won the race on behalf of the town. Everyone celebrates, and the joy brings the community together. In the second stanza, that celebration is replaced by the scene of the runner’s death: now, in a tragic mirror of his victory, the townspeople carry his corpse through the streets. However, the speaker emphasizes that the runner’s fame would have died regardless. He writes that “glory does not stay,” and uses the symbol of the laurel, which is given to winning athletes and which dies earlier than the other plants, to cast fame as inherently ephemeral.
The speaker casts the loss of fame as a kind of death. In the fifth stanza, he speaks of runners “whom renown outran / And the name died before the man.” The syntax here creates a parallel between the “name” and the “man,” suggesting that the end of fame is equivalent to the end of a life. The speaker uses the brevity of fame to comfort the runner, reminding him that had he lived longer, he would have merely been forced to see his greatness fade away. However, in the final stanza he also advises the runner that he will achieve fame in the afterlife. The scene ironically undoes the speaker’s offer of consolation, because we know that the fame the runner achieves in the afterlife will still have the same fundamental ephemerality.
Death
As the title announces, “To an Athlete Dying Young” is a poem about death. The poem presents an ultimately bleak vision of death and the afterlife, even as it attempts to comfort the runner for his early death. The poem does not treat the dead athlete as though he has completely left the world. The speaker addresses him throughout as though he can still hear him, attempting to offer comfort, and the final stanza depicts an afterlife where the runner will be surrounded by the dead. Yet the poem also departs from the Christian model of the afterlife which Housman would have likely learned in school. The dead runner is not judged by God, and he is neither rewarded for his faith nor punished for his sins—indeed, his moral worth is completely irrelevant.
Instead, Housman’s depiction of death is much more closely modeled after the version of death in ancient Greek poetry, especially the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Greeks and Romans were typically more concerned with winning honor in this life than salvation in the next. They depicted the afterlife as a vast, formless space populated by fading and shadowy versions of living people. In the final stanza of the poem, the speaker imagines the runner joining that bleak afterlife, where his strength as someone recently deceased would be a source of envy. The poem’s focus on the runner’s fame, and its argument that life will save the speaker from losing his reputation, not only mirrors the Greek and Roman focus on honor, but also casts death as a true ending. Death only frees the runner from losing his honor because it renders him blind and deaf, unable to know what happens to his reputation. Thus, although the speaker addresses the runner as though he can still hear, the poem’s depiction of death ultimately casts death as a loss of connection with the vitality and excitement of life.
Masculinity
One less obvious theme in “To an Athlete Dying Young” is masculinity. Housman was a gay man living in a deeply homophobic society. He harbored an unreciprocated affection for his college roommate, which, he later wrote, inspired much of his poetry. Housman perceived his roommate, who was tall and athletic, as more successfully embodying masculine ideals. We can see these same ideas at play in “To an Athlete Dying Young.” We can assume that the race was entirely male, and that the runner who is the subject of the poem thus proved himself the best among these men. In the first stanza, the speaker also stresses that the crowd was entirely male, made up of men and boys. The world the poem depicts is thus homosocial, or defined by male-male bonds. Throughout the poem, Housman also returns to the noun “lad,” first referring to the runner as a “smart lad,” and later writing that he “will not swell the rout / of lads that wore their honours out.” The word emphasizes the runner’s maleness as well as his youth and vitality.
However, of course, the youth ultimately dies. The final lines of the poem imply that masculinity itself is fragile and ephemeral. Housman writes that the dead will “flock round that early-laurelled head…and find unwithered on its curls / The garland briefer than a girl’s.” First, we can contrast the “strengthless dead” against the crowd of “man and boy” in the beginning of the poem. The latter are gendered, while the former are androgynous, and fail to live up to the masculine ideal of strength. We get a sense, then, that death involves a loss of homosocial community. Second, the poem’s unusual final line contrasts the dead athlete against a girl. Despite having died, for now he retains his boyish vigor. However, the word “briefer” is foreboding. As well as again emphasizing the brevity of fame, the adjective also contrasts the boy against a girl, and seems to suggest that masculinity is more short-lived.
