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Discuss the poetry techniques in "To an Athlete Dying Young," and relate the poem to The Great Gatsby.

Housman's poem is an elegy, somber and poignant. It consists of seven quatrains (four-line stanzas). Each stanza is composed of two rhyming couplets; with the exception of "come/home" in the second stanza, the rhymes are all perfect. The meter is iambic tetrameter. 

Numerous poetry techniques are evident, primarily alliteration and metaphor. The alliterative vowels add a smooth, flowing rhythm to the poem, while the metaphors develop theme. Examples of alliteration such as "silence/sounds," "So/set," "fleet/foot," and "sill/shade" help create a soft tone. The poem's metaphors reference death, "the shady night" that has closed the athlete's eyes forever. He is brought "home" (to his grave), and he (in his coffin now rather than his victory chair) is placed at his "threshold," the edge of his grave. He has become a "Townsman of a stiller town" as he is buried in a cemetery.

Clear thematic parallels can be drawn between Housman's athlete and Gatsby. Both die young after achieving stunning individual success. Neither will grow old to outlive his accomplishments. The athlete will never see his glory fade because he has slipped away "[f]rom fields where glory does not stay." Similarly, Jay Gatsby will never lose his great fortune. More importantly, however, because Gatsby died with his dream of Daisy intact, he will never experience the loss of his sustaining romantic illusion. Housman's athlete and Fitzgerald's Gatsby both perish while at the top of their separate "games." Their physical deaths occur before the cruel realities of life can damage their spirits.