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"To An Athlete Dying Young" Dying young is considered by most to be one of the most tragic of fates. The specter of things undone and a life unlived haunts the funeral and colors the grief to an even darker shade. Most people desire to live to a ripe old age (or, at least, they claim to desire it) and would be aghast to have a premature death viewed in a positive light. Yet, this …

…seems to be also mourning his own special kind of death. The speaker is happy that the athlete died at such a young age because he sees much of himself in the young champion; yet, he also assumes everyone will see life the way he does. In all this process, the reader shifts pity from the dead to the living, mourning not what was never to arrive but what did arrive and was never received