This is not as much as poem of the death of an athlete, before his time as a poem of consequences. Houseman is a classicist and Latin scholar: he idealizes the death of the young.

Who is still pretty and whose Laurels have not faded.

I disagree. The years of running were once: the certificates fade in the library. I now walk and jog and do things to keep the pain at bay. From the over training of youth.

Laurels are for the young.

To an Athlete Dying Young

BY A. E. HOUSMAN

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, 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.

I know the value of the laurels of youth: I won my fair share, and watched all too often with those who had more talent won. The competition did drive one on, but you had to love the training, from the early runs in the frost to the pain of a maximum anaerobic effort.

As we get older, we need to continue with this: if not for us but for others. We need to be physically strong. The effort we face does not end until we do. But this I know: the laurels will remain with the young.

And we pray they carry us from the Kirk, not us them.