Analysis Of The Poem 'To An Athlete Dying Young'
“To an Athlete Dying Young” is an amazing poem that is an ode to a young athlete that did not get to live out the prime of their life because of an unfortunate event that sadly ended their life early. A. E. Housman, the poet of “To an Athlete Dying Young”, was born on March 26th in 1859, and was a Latin professor at Cambridge University until his death on April 30th in 1936. In “To an Athlete Dying Young”, Housman perfectly uses a different point of view, figurative language, sound devices, and a negative mood to tell the story of the poem.
Many assume that the speaker is the poet when reading a poem, but this is not true for “To an Athlete Dying Young”. In this poem evidence points towards one of the men carrying the athlete through the marketplace as being the speaker of the poem “...We chaired you through the marketplace...And home we brought you shoulder-high.” Plus, the way the speaker is talking about the athlete points towards it being someone who was
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The first two stanzas of the poem are extended metaphors representing the athlete coming home from winning a race and being carried to his grave “...home we brought you shoulder-high...set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town.” In addition to extended metaphors, Housman also uses personification “...After the earth has stopped the ears...the name died before the man.” Housman, however, does not use a profuse amount of sound devices, but he does use couplet rhyme scheme. Plus, he also uses imagery “...find unwithered on its curls the garland briefer than a girl’s.” The symbolism of the laurel meaning triumph and success is equally represented in his poem “...From fields where glory does not stay, and early though the laurel grows it withers quicker than the rose.” These elements added together help set the negative mood of the
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