To An Athlete Dying Young Essay

In his poem “To An Athlete Dying Young,” Housman contrasted the popular view of life. Humans always believe that every person’s life, in spite of struggles, sufferings, pains, and triumphs, must be lived to the fullest until old age and death claims us. However, Housman presented a different lens through the idea that dying young is better because a person will not experience the bitterness of his own downfall when fame and glory no longer smiles on him. The height and bliss of glory and the bitterness of death are the two main themes of the poem, supporting the poet’s belief that dying early is best for us.

The poem opens, in the first four lines, with a runner who was praised by the townspeople in his triumph in a race. Those lines gave the reader a view of glory’s bliss when it favored one person. In human experiences, we often feel that winning is a memorable thing as highlighted in the first stanza of the poem. In the next four lines, of second stanza, the poet shows us that the runner was already dead. The seventh line “And set you at your threshold down,” is a metaphor of burying a dead runner, the casket is slowly placed on its “threshold,” which

Glory dies and so people who achieved it. The reader will encounter the word “laurel” in the eleventh line; it symbolizes glory because in the ancient times, a wreath of laurel is used as symbol of victory, fame, magnificence, or even grandeur. When the laurel leaves are plucked from its tree, life is no longer in the leaves and it will wither quickly. If a leaf is plucked from a tree, the life inside the leaf will die. It is parallel to human experience, when death claims us we are like a leaf plucked from the tree that gives us life. Whatever beauty or glory is within us, or even in a leaf, when plucked, it will die with us. Glory can fade as well as our fames and victories. Those can be forgotten when we left this