The effectiveness of Houseman's use of imagery in "To an Athlete Dying Young". Houseman uses imagery very effectively to express his major themes in the poem. The most important themes are mutability, pessimism and doomed youth. The poem is elegiac and focuses on the supposed achievement of the dead youth rather than on any loss which his death may have brought.
Many of Houseman's images in the poem express the transience of life on earth. There is a preponderance of metaphors which focus on this. The world becomes "fields where glory does not stay" from which the dead youth has departed untimely. The world is a place where "early though the laurel grows / it withers quicker than the rose". The suggestion is that in our world, fame does not last, that in fact it fades ("the laurel") even more quickly than beauty ("the rose") does.
Houseman throws up the athlete's image as a celebrated compatriot, champion and a man of the people. He was always celebrated as a hero any time he won sports honours and laurel. Both the old and the young always mounted informal guards of honour on roadsides to cheer him and carried him shoulder — high round the town. Upon his death, the whole town including his sportsmen never abandoned him. His corpse was equally taken round mournfully.
Several metaphors also express the theme of pessimism. Death, destitution and suffering are seen as inevitable in this world. Thus, Houseman suggests that the dead youth has gained rather than lost in his fate. He has been transported from a world in which youths are doomed to suffer. He "will not swell the rout/of lads that wore their hours out". This metaphor suggests the inevitability of desolation, frustration and disillusionment. So also does the metaphor "Runners whom renown outran". Rather than settle for a life of disillusionment in this world, the youth has gone to his grave early in his life.
Houseman paints an image of the athlete as a dear soul to his people, even in death, judging from the befitting burial given him. The athlete is portrayed as a man full of untapped resources right to his grave.
Death might be welcome to provide escape from the vicissitudes of life, but Houseman's images create an atmosphere of fatalism and a mood of resignation. He uses somber images to relate to death. The grave is a "stiller town", death is a "shady night", the youth is being laid to rest "on the sill of shade" and the dead are "strength less".