Reconciling Death
Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young” and Yogananda’s “The Dying Youth’s Divine Reply”
Oct 27, 2006
In A. E. Housman’s poem “To an Athlete Dying Young,” the speaker praises the young deceased athlete for dying before he had to face the humiliation of seeing his record broken. The young athlete had won a race for his town, and the proud townspeople had carried him on their shoulders through the thoroughfare celebrating his victory.
The poem’s setting is the funeral procession wherein they again carry the athlete on their shoulders but this time in a coffin. The speaker muses about the loss of the young person, but ultimately finds comfort in thinking that it is good that the young man died before he could see someone else break his record.
Death not usually welcome
Of course, everyone has a different perspective on the desirability of death, but generally no one welcomes it. And while Housman’s speaker would not have advised the young athlete to commit suicide to achieve the outcome that he did, the speaker, nonetheless, decides that death, in the case, is not an unwelcome event.
In the Housman poem, readers do not know what the young athlete’s thoughts. They do not know how he died. The speaker does not deem that the important focus. The point is the young man died, and the speaker wishes to suggest a unique way for his mourners to solace themselves.
In the Housman poem, we do not know what the young athlete’s thoughts are. We do not even know how he died. Was it by accident? Or an illness? We are never told, because the speaker does not deem that the important focus. The point is the young man died, and the speaker wishes to suggest a unique way for his mourners to solace themselves.
“The Dying Youth’s Divine Reply”
In Paramahansa Yogananda’s “The Dying Youth’s Divine Reply,” the reader encounters two similarities with the Housman poem: both dying persons are young, and both poems portray ways of reconciling death.
Two minor differences between the poems are that in the Housman poem, the youth is already dead; in Yogananda’s poem, the speaker has not yet died. In the Housman poem, the speaker is a mourner, who does the reconciling, while in Yogananda’s poem, the dying youth and does the reconciling.
Solace in not having athletic record broken
The speaker in Housman’s poem remains focused on the earthly plane. He does not portray the world into which the youth has entered; he does not speculate about that world, except in the first two lines of the last stanza when he says, “And round that early-laurelled head / Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead.”
The speaker suggests that the dead are weak, and yet they will gaze on the youth’s “early-laurelled head” “And find unwithered on its curls / The garland briefer than a girl's.” So there is not much here to look forward to, and the only reconciliation is the fact that his victorious record will not be broken while he is alive.
Divine understanding
Unlike this poor youth, the dying youth in the Yogananda poem has the special understanding and ability to know that his dying simply means that his soul will inhabit a beautiful astral world, and therefore, he admonishes his mourners not to mourn.
In the opening stanza, readers learn that the doctors have said the young man has but one day to live. But the readers are also made aware that the young man has been close to God: “In his laughter he had often heard / The echo of God’s merriment.”
His family grieves at such news and begs the young man not to leave them. But the young man, who has seen visions of the astral world, is not disheartened by the news of his coming demise, quite the contrary.
He answers, “The smiles of the youth grew /brighter, / And he joyously spoke, in a voice that sang: / ‘Ah, just a day; yea, but a day / Between me and my long-lost Beloved’.” His happiness of entering into a level of being that he deems will draw him closer to God motivates his joyous voice to sing his delight.
The poem continues for six more stanzas, longest poem in Songs of the Soul. The youth continues to paint scenes of his expectations after his soul has left its body: “My light has plunged into His Light / And is playing over the splendors of eternity. / The shadows of fanciful fears have slipped away / And His Light has spread over the dark nooks of my soul.”
Finally, the dying youth is the one who comforts his mourners: “You weep for me dark tears, / Crying for your loss in me; / But I weep for you joyous tears.”
Different purposes, different perception of death
The two poems display fascinating differences between mortal perceptions of death. The Housman poem is clever but ultimately a rationalization and not a very convincing one. Of course, the reader did not hear from the dying athlete, but would guess is that he would have preferred to be able to experience knowing that he record was broken.
The dying youth in the Yogananda poem, however, has no qualms about dying, because he has a strong faith that he is going to be closer to God. He has intuited that his soul lives on, and therefore, he has no fears about what God will have in store for him after leaving the “prison” of his physical body.
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