• Source: An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

"An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" is a poem by Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), 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 narrator describes the circumstances surrounding his imminent death. The poem is a work that discusses the role of Irish soldiers fighting for the United Kingdom 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.




Poem






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 Augusta, Lady Gregory.




Structure


The poem contains 16 lines of text arranged in iambic tetrameter. The rhyme scheme is arranged in four quatrains of ABAB.




Cultural influence






= Literature

=
The title of John Patrick Shanley's play A Lonely Impulse of Delight (1985) comes from the poem. Furthermore, quotes from the poem are included in Jawaharlal Nehru's The Discovery of India (1946), Mahmoud Darwish's poem "As He Walks Away" (in Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?, 1995), and Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls (2018).




= Music

=
Musical settings of the poem are performed by various singers and groups, including Angelo Branduardi (on Branduardi canta Yeats, 1986), Shane MacGowan of The Pogues (on Now and in Time to Be, 1997) and The Waterboys (on An Appointment with Mr Yeats, 2011). Additionally, the British rock group Keane based their song "A Bad Dream" (on Under the Iron Sea, 2006) on the poem.




= Film and Television

=
The poem is quoted in the movies Memphis Belle (1990) and Congo (1995), as well as in an episode of the second series of In the Flesh (2014).




See also


List of works by William Butler Yeats




Citations






References


Cole, Sarah. "The Poetry of Pain". The Oxford Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry. Ed Tim Kendall Oxford University Press: 2007
Foster, R.F. The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making it Up in Ireland. London: Penguin 2001 ISBN 0-7139-9497-5
Pierce, David. Irish writing in the twentieth century: a reader. Cork University Press: 2000 ISBN 978-1-85918-258-1
Vendler, Helen. Our Secret Discipline. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2007 ISBN 0-674-02695-0




External links


The collected public domain poetry of Yeats as an eBook at Standard Ebooks

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
• An Appointment with Mr Yeats
• Kiltartan
• War poetry
• Anadiplosis
• Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892–1935
• Cuala Press
• Neil Hannon
• Dun Emer Press
• 1919 in Ireland