"An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" - William Butler Yeats

“An Irish Airman Forsees His Death” by William Butler Yeats is a poem her wrote for his friend who was the Irish Airman who was killed in action. The poet’s purpose in the poem is to create a significant memory of his friend who unfortunately died that day – he wanted us to feel empathy for the times the soldiers went through during war. The men do not want to fight shown on line 9-10,

"Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,

Nor public men, nor cheering crowds;"

The overall mood the poet has set within the poem is a feeling of dread, sorrow, sympathy, empathy, grief and also leaves you curious – who is this man? Why should we fight?, etc. In the beginning you can sense memories and the use of shame in the way they are living their life. How their life is easily wasted. Through the poem you start to feel grief but in some way you feel happy for the man, he is letting go, he is going to stop fighting and find his happy place. But you also feel despair in some ways as it seems that after the last word, the last letter – the man is passed, it is all over. You feel empty in some way. Yeats is trying to make us feel this emptiness, he is trying to make us feel as though we are in that situation, and we cannot turn back. The craftsmanship of the poet is quite interesting. The poet has used sets of imagery shown in the words on line 10,

“Nor public men, nor cheering crowds”

And on line 11,

“Drove to this tumult in the clouds;”

Yeats has also used a set of repetition in the vowels of the words such as on lines 13-15,

“I balanced all, brought all to mind,

…

A waste of breath, the years behind”

The thoughts during the process of the poem would have been to create an effect upon the audience to make them understand what is really going on, how this man felt – which was successful in the way the poem has expressed its emotions.


The poem is structured in a way that it does not really have any more than 1 stanza and has 16 lines going in an iambic pattern. The rhymes are all in a structure of A-B-A-B C-D-C-D E-F-E-F G-H-G-H. The language the poet has used is old English, aka formal wording with the use of first person. The first person technique is successful in showing the thoughts of the character, to portray the emotions the character feels in the situation. The poet also used Euphemism to leave the audience thinking about it, it creates the poem more sombre as it makes it innocent, to say as the character is the victim within the poem. The poet also uses literal meanings such as in line 2,

“Somewhere among the clouds above”

Yeats has used imagery within the poem with the use of symbolic meaning. For an example, shown in line 2,

“Somewhere among the clouds above”

There is the symbolic meaning as that is how the Irish Airman dies, he is in a plane fighting against other countries and when he knows that he about to ‘meet my fate’ among the clouds above. The effect creates a feeling of knowledge of what is going to happen and it introduces the poem quickly and precisely to the audience. The movement within the poem is of standard rhymes and uses plenty of assonance, such as in lines 13 and 15,

“I balanced all, brought all to mind,

…

A waste of breath the years behind”



In summary, the overall impact it has for me is the feeling of sadness, grief and emptiness. The poem is successful as a work of art by the way it musically flows through with the artistic images coming through your mind. This was created by the appropriate use of imagery. All in all the poem does successfully achieve the poet’s purpose to say that this man was a sweet man and he did not want to go through with it. The audience can see him being affected and in some way feel guilty in forcing this man to kill someone he didn’t want to kill, so this man gave up for someone else’s life.