To An Athlete Dying Young

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a sad and mournful time.
Rather than join the others in mourning, however, in the third stanza the speaker is instead reflecting on how lucky the young athlete was to have died when he did:
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Dying was better than lingering on outlasting the glory of his victories. He speaks of how lucky the young athlete was to have died before anyone could break his records or before his accomplishments were forgotten.
Speaking of how quickly the laurels die, the speaker seems to put himself in the place of the young runner with a knowledge that suggests he, too, once knew these glories. Through the speaker’s thoughts and from the sound of experience, the reader gets a glimpse of what the speaker’s life may have been like. You also get to see the runner’s life compared to the speaker’s life. He speaks of having records ...

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