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To An Athlete Dying Young Analysis

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There are several themes within the language of poetry; from love to divorce, to death and life, to war and worship. The themes of a variety of poems depend on the time and date the poem is written and published as well as what the poet likes and if there are any significant political or societal events happening. Sometimes, themes are easy to analyze and other poems are written in a way that the poet hides the message by using different languages. Death was important to poetry from the medieval times to the 20th century. Poets write about death resulting from being in love, young, and in war. The poems that strongly portray the themes of death over different centuries and cultures that will be analyzed throughout this paper are “Lord Randal”, …show more content…
This poem was written by A.E. Houseman to portray death at a young age in a positive aspect. This poem was written around the period that World War I was happening, which made his poems relate to war, death, and in this case, being an athlete. However, I didn’t know if it would be about an athlete dying or if it would be a similar theme but in a different perspective. It turns out the poem was about an athlete who died young and this poet wanted to write about the funeral and the positives about dying young. The poem starts off talking about the athlete in this poem and how they just won the race for the town. The town was so happy for him that they carried him though the town and to his house. The next stanza of this poem is about the road that all runners run which can relate to where the runners like to run or how a road is also a path of travel in life and in death. We travel this road which can lead us anywhere but we all must live and all must die. The next stanza the poet says “Smart lad, to slip betimes away from fields where glory does not stay, and early though the laurel grows; it withers quicker than the rose”. (Houseman, 1896, p.1175) This stanza is describing how even though he won the race in the beginning of this poem, and was praised; he will not win every race. And as soon as he loses, the town is going to be upset, but if he withers away and passes away then the crowd will remember him more and acknowledge his achievements. This poem does not degrade death at an early age, but rather looks and keeps writing about the perks. If he dies now he won’t have to see a broken record, and he won’t hear silence cheers because his ears will no longer work. The poem ends with this athlete still in fame and dies with peace, and fame. Overall, the poem is a positive aspect of death and explains many metaphors of death like the road of life, home as in heaven,

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