poetryassignmentTEP424 - To An Athlete Dying Young

To An Athlete Dying Young

Biography Alfred Edward Housman

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you throught the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

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.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

Alfred Edward Housman 1896

betimes
ocassionally, or
from time to time

rout
a disorderly crowd
of people; an overwhelming
defeat

lintel
a horizontal beam
that completes a door
or window

Poem sourced from: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-an-athlete-dying-young/