As the oldest of seven brothers and sisters, Alfred Edward Housman was born in 1859 in Fockbury, England. On his twelfth birthday, his mother passed away, leading to the pessimism his poetry expresses. In 1877, Housman studied Greek and Roman Classics while attending St. John’s College in Oxford. There he fell in love with his roommate, Moses Jackson, who did not share the same feelings as him. In 1892, he became the Professor of Latin at University College in London and then in 1911 at Trinity College in Cambridge, which he held until his death in 1936. Throughout his life, he only published two works of poetry: A Shropshire Lad in 1896, in which the majority of his poems were written after the death of his friend, Adalbert Jackson, and Last Poems in 1922. In both of these volumes, he centers the poems on common themes like “fleeting youth, grief, and death” (A.E. Housman), which are seen in the poem “To an Athlete Dying Young.”
The title, “To an Athlete Dying Young,” is relevant to the poem and the central theme because the entire poem is about a young athlete who has just passed away. The poem provides the reader with a point of view that praises this athlete for dying at a young age. “To an Athlete Dying Young,” is considered to be a lyric poem because of its rhythm and is classified as an elegy, “A somber poem or song that praises or laments the dead” (Cummings 1). The title impacts the central theme of the poem because of the first word, “To.” The word “To” implies that the poem is a toast or a salute to those athletes who die young. Also, it creates a more personal bond between the speaker and the athlete. This is crucial because this title correlates with the theme. In the poem “To an Athlete Dying Young,” the speaker, ...
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...er reaching this glory.
Works Cited
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“Ex-basketball Player” seems to have a more negative tone than “To an Athlete Dying Young.” Though, both a talk about former athlete’s glorious past when the runner in the first dies and the athlete in the second retired. In the poem ‘To an Athlete Dying Young” the runner dies at a young age of natural causes even though his fame does not but while in “Ex-Basketball Player” the fame of Flick washes away in his growing of age. The tone of “To an Athlete Dying Young” overall is much more positive since the poet praises the young athlete as "smart" to leave a world where glory does not remain and can only vanish. It is far better to die young, as Houseman suggests, than to join the many who had enjoyed glory but now have faded. Dying young
Ryan reminds us of the suggestive power of poetry–how it elicits and rewards the reader’s intellect, imagination, and emotions. I like to think that Ryan’s magnificently compressed poetry – along with the emergence of other new masters of the short poem like Timothy Murphy and H.L. Hix and the veteran maestri like Ted Kooser and Dick Davis – signals a return to concision and intensity.
The speakers in the A. E. Housman poem “To an Athlete Dying Young” and the Edward Arlington Robinson poem “Richard Cory” serve different purposes but use irony and rhyme to help convey their message. In “To an Athlete Dying Young” the speaker’s purpose is to show the audience that dying young with glory is more memorable than dying old with glory. In “Richard Cory” the speaker’s purpose is to show the audience “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” In the poem “To an Athlete Dying Young” the author uses rhyme to show the reader how the glory of the runner came and went in a dramatic way. By having rhyme in “To an Athlete Dying Young” it allows the irony in the poem and the meaning that poet A. E. Housman is trying to convey, to really stick with the readers.
A. E. Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young," also known as Lyric XIX in A
Both poems have a propitious view of the theme of death. In “To An Athlete Dying Young” Houseman praises the young athlete for dying relatively young. He says “smart lad…not stay (9-10).” Houseman tells the athlete that he was smart to die at a young age because he can no longer witness his glory fade away as he gets older. His interpretation of death is very ironic. Many people consider it a tragedy when an athlete dies young because the athlete cannot further his career anymore, but Houseman argues that an athlete should not further his career because once he is old, he is a shell of his former self. By taking his life during a young age, the athlete gave himself eternal life in people’s mind. Moreover, in “Crossing The Bar”, Tennyson describes death as something people should not fear. Tennyson k...
A.E. Housman was a man of great opposites which means his poetry seems to be so very delicate and full of gentle regret, but he himself was a very hash self-disciplined man. He happened to write several poems and one of them is titled “To an Athlete Dying Young” which happens to talk about the advantages of dying young before an athlete’s glory does. This is a very sad topic to write on and gives an insight into the dreary life that Housman lived, but that is a topic for another day. However he did accomplish three messages in the poem “To an Athlete Dying You” like pride is important to an athlete, your people will take you to your home, and you will be able to die a very happy person.
Dickman’s poems are confessional and narrative enough to be entries in his diary. Dickman writes all of his poems like an autobiography; telling a story from his point of view incorporating his thoughts and ideas. He expresses what he believes and what he likes, while telling a descriptive story that, often, has a digression from his
When in high school, the glory days of being the shining star of athletics is such a sweet victory. The crowd chants your name and the state knows the skills you can display. Your body is still growing and gaining muscle; a new exciting discovery to unfold every new season. The feeling of setting records could not be replicated in any other shape or form. No one could take it away from you, other than yourself. Could death itself shatter those dreams, or allow the name to ring on forever? In A. E. Housman’s To an Athlete Dying Young, Houseman portrays that death is a good thing in a young athlete’s life as they will never have to see their records broken, earth would not be allowed to limit abilities with age, and their name will never be forgotten while they are still living.
In the poem “To an Athlete Dying Young”, begins with a young athlete being celebrated by his townspeople after he just won a big race. Soon after the
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Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Edited Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.
He was still disillusioned by the injustices in life which separated him from God, but he was much more nostalgic for the innocence of his childhood. Housman insisted his poetry was not based on his own pain, but mankind. That was completely the opposite of how he wrote. He projected his own pain into the poetry he wrote. It was as if all of his troubles were too insufferable for him to bear, so he projected them into his work and gave them voice. As time wore on, Housman became more cynical and pessimistic about God and all of the religion he was reared to believe in. Pessimism is the root of atheism. Not believing in God results from a feeling of rejection; losing God results in a loss of ego. Housman was both an atheist and a pessimist. By not believing in God, a supreme being, everything else holds no value. Goodness is blurred by the veil of atheism. Pessimism is a hallmark of atheism, even for those who keep their
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Alfred Edward Housman was born on March 26, 1859, at Valley House in Fockbury. The Valley House was near Bromsgrove in Worchester. He was the eldest of seven children. His father was practicing to be a lawyer but worked as a country solicitor. While growing up, he and a few of his siblings were avid writers of poetry. They enjoyed writing humorous poetry. Within his adult years, despite the rise in importance of novels in literary form, his more mature poetry often displays touches of grim comedy, even a carryover from the juvenilia. Housman early years were saddened by his mothers’ illness and death. Her death had a lasting impact on his life. The lack of his fathers’skills of being a good husband and a good father often caused the family some financial troubles and many other problems. The hard shiphe and his family experienced as a child was deeply emb...