Here's the poem.

To An Athlete Dying Young
A. E. Housman

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

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.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girls.

As I've sat at the funerals of friends who died of 'complications related to HIV/AIDS,' this poem always comes to mind. I've always found it so incredibly poignant. (I think Meryl Streep read it in the movie, "Out of Africa.") Typing it over now, I noted for the first time a certain homoerotic quality that had escaped me before. Imagine if the poem had been written not on the occasion of the young man's death, a hymn to his prowess and ability. The final image of the shades in Hades gathering around the newly arrived youthful athlete with fascination is eerie, but also sort of erotic.

Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's just my mood. Looking forward to the dungeon demo tonight.