To an Athlete Dying Young (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: A. E. Housman
- First Published: 1896
- Type of Work: Elegy
- Genres: Poetry, Elegy
- Subjects: Death or dying, Fame, Funeral rites or ceremonies, Athletes, Honor, Cemeteries, Track athletics, Coffins
The Poem
“To an Athlete Dying Young” is written in seven quatrains of rhymed iambic tetrameter. Each line, therefore, normally contains eight syllables, with the even-numbered syllables stressed. In each quatrain, the first and third, and second and fourth lines rhyme on the final syllable.
A. E. Housman was an Englishman by birth and a classical scholar (mostly of Roman poetry) by profession. In many of his poems, these two aspects of their author combine to create a paradoxically unchanging world of human vicissitudes. In this poem, for example, there is no clearly...
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