To an Athlete Dying Young (Poem) Summary
A. E. Housman

To an Athlete Dying Young (Poem) Overview

“To an Athlete Dying Young” is a 28-line elegiac lyric poem by English poet and scholar, Alfred E. Housman. The poem was first published in Housman’s famous 1896 A Shropshire Lad, which contains a total of 63 poems all connected by the setting of Shropshire. “To an Athlete Dying Young” is the nineteenth in the collection. In this poem, the speaker describes the death of an athlete from Shropshire, who passes away when he is still a young man. Despite the inherent tragedy of this subject, the speaker offers the consolation that, at the very least, the athlete has died and is enshrined amongst the folks of Shropshire, who will not forget him.