The Ephemerality of Glory

Not unlike the Classic texts on which Housman wrote scholarship, Housman’s poetry also takes as one of its central themes the means of immortalizing glory, which by nature is short-lived. The speakers emphasize this inherent ephemerality with natural imagery that is also combined with classical imagery – matter of factly, the speakers remark, “And early though the laurel grows / It withers quicker than the rose,” an image that is expanded upon in the final stanza of the poem, when the speakers claim that on the athlete's “early-laurelled head” though it is “unwithered” at present, “The garland briefer than the girl’s” (11-12, 25, 27-28). The repeated motif of the laurel, whose lifespan is “briefer than the girl’s” and will soon “wither” emphasizes the precarious odds the Shropshire athlete and his townspeople are up against. The gesture towards immortalizing the athlete’s triumph for...