Housman was a Latin scholar and professor best known for his oft-quoted poem "To an Athlete Dying Young," poem XIX from the volume A Shropshire Lad (1896). Guiding QuestionsĪ mid-nineteenth century English poet, A.E. This lesson will provide them with analytical skills for reading and understanding poetry in general. Upon completing the suggested activities below, students will have a better understanding of how to read and interpret a poem from both the thematic level of death and the detailed level of poetic form. In this lesson, students will study poems about death, including the aforementioned poems. Dylan Thomas' well-read villanelle "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," by contrast, takes a different look at death: fight until the end, regardless of its inevitability. Housman's commonly read "To an Athlete Dying Young," for example, present death as a way to celebrate a young life lived to its fullest. Poems about death, however, vary greatly both in terms of their tone and form. For poetry enables any poet to meditate upon and emotionally and lyrically respond to death, whether the death of a stranger, a loved one, oneself, or just the fact of death itself. It's no wonder, then, that poets through the ages-no matter the time or place-have sought to address death through poetry. Perhaps no other theme elicits such deep and varied emotions from individuals across the globe.
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