To An Athlete Dying Young Poem Analysis

The Memoir of a Champion A.E. Housman’s emotional poem, “To an Athlete Dying Young,” appears to present a solemn farewell to any young athlete who dies young in the modern age. The speaker seems to be giving his last goodbye to the town athlete whether they are the star or the benchwarmer of the team it allows the reader to feel more attached to this character that the speaker is painting. Housman carefully crafts a depressing yet loving final goodbye to all the athletes or stars of the world that die young, and then shows briefly how life is after they’re gone. Housman’s depressing work adheres to a closed style through stanza division and meters. The twenty-six lines in this poem are divided into seven different stanzas, and each stanza consists of two pairs of rhyming couplets. The opening stanza forms the pattern for the poem:
“The time you won the town race
We chaired you through the market place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.”
This poem continues this style throughout the entirety of the poem, but the poem also holds a specific meter throughout. This can be examined by looking at any line in the poem, but the first line sets the stage for the rest of the poem to follow up on. The meter can be examined by looking at the first line and then the second line of the poem, “The time you won your town the race/ We chaired you through the market place” (1-2). The pattern of unstressed to stressed shows the iambic poetic style, and the separation of four iambic feet shows that Housman used an iambic tetrameter to write his