The Glory of Dying Young

It is very common that many people want to grow old and accomplish many things before they pass away. In many cases it’s not necessarily the accomplishments that really count, but the actual glory and knowing that you will be recognized forever which really motivate many people. But in A. E. Housman’s poem “To An Athlete Dying Young”, its seems that glory is always escaping, and in order to capture it and make it last, a person must die young after achieving greatness. Houseman is able to preserve the young athlete’s achievement by using an intricate rhyme and meter, figures of speech, and the figure of the laurel, to preserve the young athletes greatness forever.
The poem is composed of seven stanzas, and is written as an ode to a young dying athlete. Each stanza consists of two pairs of end-rhyming lines, or couplets (aa,bb/cc,dd/etc…). Many of the poems lines are in iambic tetrameter, which according to Poetry Handbook: A Dictionary of Terms is “a line having four feet that each consist of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable” (Deutsch 95). Lines 1 and 2 of the poem are examples of an iambic tetrameter: The time you won your town the race/
We chaired you through the mar ket-place.
Other lines in the poem are in trochaic tetrameter with catalexis in the end of each line. The first two lines in the fourth stanza are an example of trochaic tetrameter with catalexis: Eyes the sha dy night has shut / Can not see the Re cord cut. According to the Poetry Handbook, a catalexis is “a line from which unstressed syllables have been dropped, in trochaic verse the final syllable is often dropped” (Deutch 25).
Housman’s use of rhyme and meter help the reader understand the ode to the dying athlete. By using couplets, Housman can express a sort of pace, much like the young athletes pace of running, to show the different stages of the young athletes accomplishments and glories. By using catalexis in the fourth stanza, Housman creates a strong statement to prove that if a young person dies young when he or she has accomplished something great, they won’t live to see the day when their accomplishments get shattered by another person.
Some of the various figures of speech that Housman used in the poem include Alliteration, Oxymoron and Personification. Some examples of alliteration are in line 1: The time you won your town the race, time and town and you and your have been used to create alliteration. In line 19: “Runners whome renown outran, the letter n has been used to create alliteration. The oxymoron that Houseman uses is in the fourth stanza when he uses “silence sounds”, this oxymoron solidifies the stanza which implies that it’s better to be six feet underground and experience silence, than to grow old and let your glory fade away. Some uses of personification are in lines 10 when Housman mentions: “From fields where glory does not stay”, and in line 16 “After earth has stopped the ears.” The first personification helps create a sense of time lapse, nothing is ever permanent. The second personification helps the fifth stanza solidify the point that when the young athlete passes away, earth will cover his ears so he won’t experience neglect and eventually fade away from his glory.
The final device that Housman uses to preserve the young athletes glory forever is the use of the image of the laurel. According to Robert K. Martin article A.E. Housman’s Two Strategies: A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems “Houseman’s poem ‘To An Athlete Dying Young’ is structured around the figure of the laurel, which, as Housman knew, was used for the wreath of the victorious athlete and for the poet. For the poem itself is the laurel wreath bestowed on the young man, and it is the wreath which guarantees a life beyond death” (Martin). Houseman’s poem to the young athlete works as a sort of laurel that he gives to the young athlete to praise him and guarantee a life beyond death.
In the third stanza, Housman praises the young athlete:
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
This stanza shows how nothing is ever really permanent in the real world, and claims that although the laurel “grows” early, it dies just as quickly as a rose. A rose, just like the young athlete, achieves a brief state of grandeur, beauty, and glory, but only for a little while because it quickly dies off and disintegrates.
The final stanza returns to the figure of the laurel, which has morphed from an emblem of early death to one of eternal life:
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.
According to an overview of the poem in Poetry for Students the “irony of this transformation, that this garland which is ‘briefer than a girl’s’ should be still ‘unwithered’ is the poet’s assertion of the permanence of art and memory…he remains alive because he wears a laurel that will not wither, a garland of words, in fact the very poem we are now reading and in the act gazing on preserves his glory forever” (Ruby).
The young athlete will forever be remember for his triumphs in his short lived life, and although there is no clear definition of when or where this young athletes life is taking place, it helps it become a universal theme for any person who achieved great feats and died young.




Works Cited
Deutch, Babette. Poetry Handbook: A Dictionary Of Terms. Harper Collins, NY 1957.
Martin, Robert K. “A.E. Housman’s Two Strategies: A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems.”
Victorian Newsletter 66 (Fall 1984):12-17. Rpt. In Poetry Criticism. Ed David M.
Galens. Vol. 43. Detroit: Gale 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 Feb
2010.
Overview: ‘To An Athlete Dying Young’ Poetry for Students. Ed. Mary K. Ruby. Vol. 7.
Detroit: Gale Group; 2000. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 Feb. 2010.