An Irish Airman Foresees His Death / Yeats

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death is a poem by Irish poet William Butler Yeats written in 1918 and first published in the Macmillan edition of The Wild Swans at Coole in 1919. The poem is a soliloquy given by an aviator in the First World War in which the poet describes the circumstances surrounding his imminent death. The poem is a work of Irish Nationalism that discusses the role of Irish soldiers fighting for Great Britain during a time when they were trying to establish independence for Ireland. Wishing to show restraint from publishing political poems during the height of the war, Yeats withheld publication of the poem until after the conflict had ended.

Background and interpretation
The airman in the poem is widely believed to be Major Robert Gregory, a friend of Yeats and the only child of Lady Augusta Gregory, Yeats' patron and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre. The collection The Wild Swans at Coole, in which this poem appeared also contained the poem "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory". In total, Yeats wrote four pieces based on Major Gregory's death.

Yeats uses this poem to portray both emotional and intellectual aspects of the aviator's choice to fly. The repetition of the word "clouds" on the second and twelfth lines of the stanza bookends the aviator's resolve; he was driven by a "lonely impulse of delight." Yeats continues the poem until it has a "perfect" number of lines. In the last four lines, Yeats uses a chiasmus of ABCCBA (balanced:years to come::waste of breath ... waste of breath::years behind:balanced). This implies that the aviator's choice was based on intellectual as well as emotional reasons.

Structure
The poem contains 16 lines of text arranged in iambic tetrameter. The rhyme scheme is arranged in four quatrains of ABAB. In "The Poetry of Pain", Sarah Cole suggests that the structure of the poem arranges the rhyming words not only on the basis of their sounds but also on their opposing themes as well: "fight/delight, crowds/clouds, mind/behind, and especially breath/death."

Summary
The aviator, of whom Yeats writes as in the first person, is convinced that the flight he is about to take will be his last, and he thinks of why he has chosen to fly. He flies for different reasons than most, not out of sense of duty or patriotism, nor for prestige or for those he has left behind. He reasons that he made his decision on the basis that his life so far has been wasted, and can see nothing to convince him that his life to come will be any better, and thus that it is better to enjoy the present, whatever the consequence.

Allusions
The poem is featured on the Yeats tribute album Now And In A Time To Be, where it is sung by Shane MacGowan of the rock group The Pogues. The British rock group Keane based their song "A Bad Dream" (featured on the album Under the Iron Sea) on it, and a recording of the poem, read by Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy, is played before the song at live venues, explaining their reasons for the lyrics. Hannon appeared in person to read it at the Keane gig at The Point Depot in Dublin (now known as the O2) on the 19th of July 2007 and again at The O2 on 21 July 2007, though the poem's title and author went unmentioned.

In the movie Memphis Belle, the character Sgt. Danny Daly recites the poem, omitting the lines referring to Ireland.

Canadian composer Juliet Hess has written an anthem for two-part choir based on this poem. The music is quite stark and suits the text quite well. The repetitive nature of the accompaniment reminds one of the music of Philip Glass. The anthem is published by Kelman Hall Publishing, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.