“ To an Athlete Dying Young ”

“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.

poem 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.

“ To an Athlete Dying Young ”