What does A.E. Housemans attitude toward suffering and pain seem to be in poems?
jfwheeler Teacher College – Sophomore eNotes Editor For Housman, “pain and suffering” are more closely related to emotional and spirtiual pain rather than physical trauma. In “To an Athlete Dying Young,” Housman acknowledges the tragic (though unspecified) death of the young hero, who was once carried on his comrades shoulders after his victories, to the same young man being held aloft by those same comrades, but this time those friends are his pallbearers. As sad as his death is, there are some good points: he will never be defeated and he will never grow old. The tone in “When I Was One-and-Twenty” is also more about emotional trauma. In this poem, the speaker is warned by an older person about the dangers of giving his heart away: When I saw one and twenty I heard a wise-man say, ‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas, but not your heart away.” Of course, no one ever learns life lessons by being told to avoid pain, and this is true of the speaker, who pays with “sighs a plenty / and so
