Being an Athlete, I am aware we are consistently pushing ourselves To reach our goal, and once you reach that goal you receive great joy and motivation to improve, but from time to time, life takes its toll and unplanned events can happen, resulting in you not being able to do what you love the most ; your sport . This is just what the narrator explains; He explains how a top runner had reached his peak athletic performance and suddenly had his life tragedy taken from him. He uses examples, “Shoulder-high we bring you home/ And the name died before the man”(lines 6/20). to explain how he is dead and that his athletic ability died with him. The title, “To an Athlete Dying Young,” immediately tells us what the poem will be about; an Athlete dying. In the first stanza, the narrator, says “We chaired you through the marketplace; Man and boy stood cheering by, And we brought you home should-high”(2-4), this describes about the …show more content…
As I read the poem, these phases stuck out as key points. Throught the poem, the author uses the line , “It withers quicker than a rose”(12) and “From fields where glory does not stay” (10) to explain that the Athlete died too soon. Also, the phrase, “Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead”(26), is saying how they are viewing his body at the funeral. Finally, the phrase that actually stuck with me is, “And silence sounds no worse than cheers” (15), this phrase is explaining how instead of everybody cheering for him, like they are used to, they are silent at his funeral. The vocabulary that the author uses is superb. Instead of using the word “laurel wreath”(image 395), he uses the term “garland” (28). The Laurel wreath is used as an Olympian reward, indicating that the athlete that receives the wreath is an Olympian. I enjoy the term “garland”(28) more than “laurel wreath”(image 395), seeing as garland is used as a more honorable