"AN IRISH AIRMAN FORSEES HIS DEATH"

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The main topic in this poem is the expression of a man's thoughts before dying.

The character is an Irish pilot who feels his last flight is at hand and reflects on the reasons

why he has chosen to fly in wartime; troughout the poem we discover these motifs were

both emotional and rational.

The poem has 16 lines arranged in one single stanza, which, based on the ideas

expressed and the rhyme pattern, could be divided in 4 parts of 4 lines each one. In the

first part (lines 1-4) the pilot foresees his death; in the second part (lines 5-8), begins to

reflect on his own reasons to fly, stating that the result of war is not of his or his country

concern; the third part (lines 9-12) explains that he did not do it for law or for admiration

but rather for a personal desire; in the final part (lines 13-16) he mades a final balance of

his past and future, finding them both worhless, and faces death.

The poem is written in first person and who speaks is the Irish pilot, Robert

Gregory, considered by Yeats as an extraordinary human being, for he was not only a

fighter, but also a horseman, an intelligent scholar and even an artist himself. The ideas

expressed in "An Irish airman forsees his death" points out that the author considered

Gregory as a man who had reached and equilibrium or "unity of being".

Yeats developed this concept as a state in which the two halves that compose the

human nature are completely mingled and balanced. Through the analysis of two poets,

Dante and Villon, Yeats identified these two halves as labour and desire, or as

predestination and freedom. In the union of this duality unity of being is reached. 1
1
SCHRICKER, Gale C. A New Species of Man: The Poetic Persona of W.B. Yeats. Bucknell University Press,
1982, pp 9-10, 100-101
 Throughout the poem we see the struggle to reach this state, for the poem begin in

an apparent contradiction which is eventually solved at the end of the text, this

contradictions are shown in the ambivalent constructions of the first part of the poem.

Those that I fight I do not hate; (line 3)

Those that I guard I do not love. (line 4)

In this lines the reader is called on the way the pilot considers his participation in

the war. He did not chose to fly because he hated Germany and its Empire, nor because

he loved his country or because he wanted to save Ireland from Europe domain. Yet this

construction of contraries leave a definitive impression on the reader: it seems the more

natural positition would be either to hate some country to fight against it or love own’s

country to fight for it. However, Yeats stablishes that Robert Gregory has chosen freely to

fly, because of his personality and natural braveness.

Another part that is also expressing the lack of balance in the protagonist and how

he is struggling to find a way to understand himself and why he is doing what he does

could be found in the parallelism:

No likely end could bring them loss (line 7)

Or leave them happier than before. (line 8)

By stating this in the poem the reader could focus on the pilot’s opinion on war. He

expresses that war would not bring any result, neither good nor bad for the country. This
could be understood as if the author would be saying that war is absurd, nevertheless, in

the poem, this construction remember us the sometimes hollow values of modern world.

Yeats thought that Unity of being was very hard to attain particularly in an agitated

modern world, in which feeling and thought are separated and lead to severe

contradictions such as the included in “An Irish airman forsees his death”. Nevertheless

Yeats also considered that it was possible to achieve this unity by analyzing own's life,

past and present in the same moment. 2 In the poem, the pilot does exactly this, in a

moment of revelation and reflection. The pilot has said early in the poem that "a lonely

impulse of delight" had drove him to fly, but it is not only his need for adventure; since he

has also concluded that he finds worthless the years he had lived until then, and thinks

that future offers him nothing, he has found the complete balance in the moment of death.

I balanced all, brought all to mind, (line 13)

In balance with this life, this death. (line 16)

By showing how the Irish pilot has reached equilibrium and solve the tension

provoked by modern society, Yeats not only presents a character that have achieved “unity

of being”, but one that has also got over from what Eliot called “dissociation of sensibility”.

He has joined succesfully emotion and thought balancing his emotional reasons for flying

and his rational thoughts in his reflection about life and death.

2
KERMODE, Frank. Romantic Image. Routledge, 2002 pp. 45-46