To An Athlete Dying Young Poem

A. E. Housman’s To An Athlete Dying Young is a poem about the death of a young athlete, but also how dying young might have been the best for him, instead of focusing on the highlights of his life as expected. It was written for young adults or older to persuade the audience that life is about the quality of your time on earth, not how many years you live on it. The first stanza starts off the poem with remembering when the athlete won the town race, but quickly transitions to his death in the second stanza. The remaining portion of the poem then addresses how the athlete died in “fame” from winning the town race and being undefeated, meaning that his fame would last longer than it would have if he was alive and that he died without the disappointment