"To An Athlete Dying Young" by A E Housman (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

Although this poem is memorable and well crafted, it's hard to find any sympathy with its message. Here's a parody of Housman by Hugh Kingsmill - which even Housman himself acknowleged as noteworthy:

What, still alive at twenty-two,
A clean upstanding chap like you?
Why, if your throat is hard to slit,
Slit your girl's and swing for it!

Like enough you won't be glad
When they come to hang you, lad.
But bacon's not the only thing
Cured by hanging from a string.

When the blotting pad of night
Sucks the latest drops of light
Lads whose job is still to do
Shall whet their knives and think of you.

Housman responded to his critics with this:

Epigraph to More Poems

They say my verse is sad: no wonder;
Its narrow measure spans
Tears of eternity, and sorrow,
Not mine, but man's.

This is for all ill-treated fellows
Unborn and unbegot,
For them to read when they're in trouble
And I am not.

Housman was a great scholar of greek tragedies - and he was capable of being funny: (this really is Housman, not a parody)

Cho. O suitably attired in leather boots
Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom
Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
To this well-nightingaled vicinity?
My object in inquiring is to know.
But if you happen to be deaf and dumb
And do not understand a word I say,
Nod with your hand to signify as much.
Alc. I journeyed hither a Boeotian road.
Cho. Sailing on horseback or with feet for oars?
Alc. Plying by turns my partnership of legs.
Cho. Beneath a shining or a rainy Zeus?
Alc. Mud's sister, not himself, adorns my shoes.
Cho. To learn your name would not displease me much.
Alc. Not all that men desire do they obtain.
Cho. Might I then hear at what your presence shoots?
Alc. A shepherd's questioned mouth informed me that -
Cho. What? for I know not yet what you will say.
Alc. Nor will you ever, if you interrupt.
Cho. Proceed, and I will hold my speechless tongue.
Alc. - This house was Eriphyla's, no one's else.
Cho. Nor did he shame his throat with hateful lies.
Alc. May I then enter, passing through the door?
Cho. Go, chase into the house a lucky foot.
And, O my son, be, on the one hand, good,
And do not, on the other hand, be bad;
For that is very much the safest plan.
Alc. I go into the house with heels and speed.

Eriphyla (within). O, I am smitten with a hatchet's jaw;
And that in deed and not in word alone.
Cho. I thought I heard a sound within the house
Unlike the voice of one that jumps for joy.
Eri. He splits my skull, not in a friendly way,
Once more: he purposes to kill me dead.
Cho. I would not be reputed rash, but yet
I doubt if all be gay within the house.
Eri. O! O! another stroke! That makes the third.
He stabs me to the heart against my wish.
Cho. If that be so, thy state of health is poor;
But thine arithmetic is quite correct.

Here's an article about Housman and what other poets thought of his work:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-sty...

Man Wearing Laurels, 1880, was painted by John Singer Sargent