“TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNG”

By: Gabriella Wolf

FAMILY LIFE

The eldest of seven children in a family was born in 1859 in Fockbury, Worcestershire, England 

When he was twelve, Housman’s mother died

his death in 1936

SCHOOLING

Housman earned a scholarship to St. John’s College, Oxford, attended in 1877

He immersed himself in the study of classical languages, particularly Latin and Greek

He helped write a magazine

Housman excelled at his studies at Oxford

in 1879 he failed his final examinations

Housman returned home ungraduated and disgraced

though he returned to Oxford a year later and obtained a “pass” degree

INFLUENCE

Housman established a friendship with a classmate, Moses Jackson, that would have an enormous impact upon his life. Jackson was a good-looking, athletic young man with whom Housman fell hopelessly and permanently in love. Jackson rebuffed his friend’s affections, and Housman was heartbroken; many of his subsequent poems speak of unrequited love and refer to the rejection he suffered when he was “one-and-twenty

POETRY UNIQUE

four-beat-per-line Housman uses that pattern written in the form of a lyric ballad composed of seven quatrains, or stanzas of four lines

The poem is composed of seven quatrains, or stanzas of four lines each.

The rhyme scheme is aabb, which means that in each stanza the lines are all identical rhymes, except for lines 5 and 6, which is a slant or near rhyme

POETIC DEVICES

Assonace (stanza 5)

Imagary (stanza1-2)

Alliteration (stanza4)

POEM

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.

To-day, the road all runners come, 5

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.

P O E M

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay, 10

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,

And silence sounds no worse than cheers 15

After earth has stopped the ears:

POEM

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man. 20

So set, before its echoes fade,

The fleet foot on the sill of shade,

And hold to the low lintel up

The still-defended challenge-cup.

POEM

And round that early-laurelled head 25

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

And find unwithered on its curls

The garland briefer than a girl's.