By: Cailey Lopes

The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market- place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder- high. Today, the road all runners come, 5 Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town. Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay, 10 And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose. Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers15 After earth has stopped the ears: Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honors out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man. 20 So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up The still-defended challenge-cup. And round that early-laureled head 25 Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find unwithered on its curls The garland briefer than a girl’s.

 He was the oldest of seven children  His younger brother Laurence was a famous dramatist  His sister Clemence was a novelist and a short story writer  When he was twelve his mother died

 Housman was born in 1859 and died in 1936  He got a scholarship to St. Johns college  He studied classical languages like Latin and Greek  He failed his final examinations in 1877 and did not graduate from high school

 He fell in love with ones of his classmates Moses Jackson  Jackson rebuffed his friend's affections and Housman was heartbroken  "many of his subsequent poems speak of unrequited love and refer to the rejection he suffered when he was "one-and-twenty."

 This poem is written in a lyric ballad-a narrative song  The rhyme scheme is in aabb, which means the words at the end of the last two lines rhyme and the words of the last two lines rhyme

Assonance : Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honors out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man Alliteration: And silence sounds no worse than cheers Imagery: Today, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town.

 Glory: He won the race and earned the acclaim of his townsman. Even though he ‘s gone he is still honored by his townsmen. The poem talks about the athlete’s glory.

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