Is My Team Plowing by A.E. Housman Essay

The poem “To an Athlete Dying Young” by A. E. Housman depicts the funeral of a young champion runner, who has died at the peak of his youth and athletic career. The poem makes note of the sorrow of a young life being cut short, but also glorifies the death of the athlete for capturing the young runner in the prime of his life. Housman’s poem was written in the form of the classical lyric poem, which could be influenced by Housman’s early tutoring in Greek and Latin lyric poetry (Holzberger 4). The poem also makes use of a four-line ballad stanza, which Housman forms into an elegy for the young runner as he reflects on the runner’s death (Holzberger 7). The use of symbols throughout the poem such as the

Towards the middle and of the poem, our narrator expresses that if someone tells him that his beloved one is present or receives any messages from her, then he would be brought back to life and regain his strength, good health and sprit. He would be revived! But, at the end of the poem, our narrator never saw nor heard from his beloved. His beloved has been gone for seven whole

The first stanza appears to have a rhyme scheme in which the second and fourth lines rhyme. However, this rhyme scheme is not perfect as the remaining stanzas do not follow this pattern. As death is personified throughout the entire poem, lines 2 and 3 introduce him as a kind gentleman that has come the take the speaker for an enjoyable carriage ride. The second stanza shows their courtesy to one another by his patient towards her as he “slowly drove-He knew no haste”, and her giving up her “labor and..leisure too” to join him for a ride.

“Time has a wonderful way of showing us what really matters.” A.E. Housman grew up in a small town in Worcestershire, London. His childhood ended at the age of twelfth because his mother passed away. Then he went to this University where he fell into a dark love and made him depressed. He worked really hard and got a job as a professor at the University College in London. Although he does all of his teaching and helping scholars he is most known for his poetry. His poems display deep feelings and are emotionless. His poems usually affected the reader like a shiver down the spine or a punch in the stomach. I am going to be talking about three messages from the poem “To an Athlete Dying Young” by A.E. Housman.

I think that the moral of this poem is that life is precious, and that life should never be taken for granted. I think this is because the whole poem is comparisons between life and death, and because she says that the people who have passed away would do anything possible to come back to life, even under the worst conditions, to be loved, to love, and to be with the people they

It is even crazier when one can love that special person even more, after they pass away. Nonetheless, that is not what it is called true love. The truest love of all is the one that remains the same by death, the one that is left unchanged. The narrator devoted his whole life to his woman, even in death. That is true love, when it is certain that there is love and it is a realization that both lovers could never live without each other. This goes hand in hand with the narrator, as he finds it difficult and almost impossible to part with the love of his life. He believes that without her, he finds no purpose in life. She does pass away, but that doesn’t stop him from being with her one bit. Death is the ultimate barrier, in this poem.

A. E. Housman was a well known poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Within his two most famous publications, A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems, Housman effectively uses his adept understanding of language, its usage, and style to portray the significant themes behind all of his poems. To an Athlete Dying Young is a perfect example of Housman’s ability to convey his message to the reader through his use of diction, syntax, and tone.

beloved dies. Throughout the poem, the speaker describes the hurt and sorrow that he is feeling

When paraphrased, the stanza above states that if the speaker is certain that she and her lover can be reunited again after death, she would enthusiastically take her own life knowing that her lover is waiting on the other side. By saying so, the speaker is considering life worthless if she cannot meet her lover. What many people call the “most valuable gift” is considered to be of no value in the eyes of the speaker if she cannot spend it with the one she loves. In addition to that statement, the author writes in stanza 3:

When so much of one’s life is left up to chance, it is nice to know that one can find certainty in death. Whereas life can be moulded to perfection and death is a guarantee, there is no way to tell what one will face following death. There are millions of different cultures, religions, and individual beliefs pertaining to the afterlife, but a definitive answer will never be known. The works of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson express two very unique interpretations of death and what follows. Both Whitman’s and Dickinson’s views of death include an idea of an afterlife, or of a continuation of the soul post death, but where Whitman welcomes the idea of demise without a trace of fear and his overall view of death is more mystical, Dickinson has a negative view of death and, at times, questions the possibility of an afterlife entirely.

Gunn uses word choice and phrases to portray the characteristics of a legitimate friend, thus giving the reader a positive impression of those who possess such terminal illnesses. The first stanza shows how a dying friend is enduring so much agony. Gunn states, “Your pain still hangs in air,” and “The voice of your despair” (76. 1-3). These particular lines show that someone is in need of comfort and love. Gunn continues his poem by mentioning the visitant is a caring friend because he places himself to his friend’s disposal. Although, the visitant wanted to make himself useful, his friend just wanted him to remember him. When the visitant agrees to remember his friend, he is basically promising he will make his friends last will true. Thus, Gunn shows

The relationship between the wife and husband is still alive. Through the description of the poem we see that the wife does not see her husband as a dead body. She treats her husband’s body as something alive that feels every touch. In the middle of the first stanza, phrases like, “She took her time”, “She washed each finger”, and “Cleaning underneath

Alternatively we can determine that these affect everyone’s lives similarly. As all stanzas without dependence on matter begin and end in this conclusive manner. The bystanders in the poem can be seen as a symbol for humanity as a whole and their response to death. Their ordinary and individual lives are affected by death in the same way through projecting grief towards the victim but moreover focusing on ‘their own distress’. The idea that death is experienced by everyone is proven in the statement ‘all streets in time are visited’. He therefore concludes that we are all impacted by death, it is ‘all we are’, the one thing we all share in common. His realistic view of death shows his acceptance of the subject. In an alternate view we could argue he sees death optimistically. His collective nouns ‘all we are’, ‘all we do’ show a universal

Death is the major speaker of this poem, its persona shows how cruel and violent it can be, however she also speaks of getting everything out of life you can before death. Starting with line twenty three of the poem she begins talking about living a full life before death, "When it 's over, I want to say all my life/I was a bride married to amazement/I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms." (23-25). Being a bride married to amazement is a comparison to commitment, being with the same person every day. However in this case with a lifestyle instead. Doing amazing and memorable things every possible day you can, not letting life pass you by. This also fits perfectly with the next few lines

A lot of us have asked ourselves the question what happens after death. After we ask this question to ourselves we don’t really go much into depth about the question we simply ignore it and go with our daily routines. Roach Mary, a scientist, says, “we have all wondered if there is an afterlife, but only a few are brave – or foolish – enough to try and find out.” There are many theories and ideas on what happens after death, some backed up with research and data and some are just plain silly. After researching many ideas, I came upon 3 ideas that caught my attention. One of these is published by THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH, it is a Philosophical series by Sylvia Hart Write. The other is an article by scientist Mary Roach. Lastly The 21 grams Theory by Dr. Duncan MacDougall. These 3 articles share similarities and differences, like one is more spiritual than the other and one is more scientific. After analyzing them and reading these articles profoundly I saw which were the “silly” articles and which article made the most sense and was backed up with evidence and research. This great question has created a large amount of curiosity in many scientists. Adam Withnall from independent.co.uk states, “It’s a question that has exercised humanities finest minds since those humans have been around to have them – and has been recently the subject