To an Athlete Dying Young

Housman puts himself in the literary context of the Elizabethan poet and playwright William Shakespeare and the 19th-century German poet Heinrich Heine. He cites them as two main influences. As with Housman, Heine focused on loss and unrequited love. Similar to Housman, Shakespeare's speaker addresses a young man: In the first 126 sonnets in his famous sonnet sequence, Shakespeare’s speaker converses directly with a young man or “fair youth.” Like Housman’s speaker in “To an Athlete Dying Young,” Shakespeare’s speaker focuses on the mutable nature of accolades and fortune. In “Sonnet XIII” (1609), the speaker reminds the young man of “that beauty which you hold in lease” (Line 5) or for a limited time.

“To an Athlete, Dying Young” also has much in common with the Romantics, which began near the start of the 1800s. The Romantics emphasized the volatility of human life. Human beings weren’t rational and logical but as tempestuous as their environment. Housman continues the Romantic tradition by revealing the athlete’s precarious situation. If he didn’t die young, any number of elements beyond his control might have damaged him and his identity. Like a Romantic individual, the athlete is fragile and inseparable from his capricious environment.