To-day the road all runners come

To-day the road all runners come January 26, 2020

Los Angeles Times,Kobe Bryant, daughter Gianna die in helicopter crash in Calabasas.”

I lived in Ardmore (Lower Merion) all through the 1990s. Just spent 20 minutes trying and failing to find a video of Jim McKay reciting this at the ’72 Olympics, so I’ll just post the text instead.

To An Athlete Dying Young

A. E. Housman – 1859-1936

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.

To-day, 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 honors 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 girl’s.

Kobe Bryant was 41.


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