"An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" is a poem by W.B. Yeats, written in 1918 and published the following year. The sixteen-line, iambic tetrameter elegy is written from the perspective of a fighter pilot in World War I. This speaker is Irish, and fights on behalf of the British army, aware that he may give his life on behalf of an imperial power to which he feels no allegiance. Through this scenario, Yeats expresses a pro-Irish independence stance, as he does in many of his other works.
The poem was written in response to the death of Robert Gregory, an Irish pilot in World War I and the son of W.B. Yeats's close friend Lady Augusta Gregory. It is one of several elegies written in response to Gregory's death. However, this is the only one of these elegies to take on the perspective of the soldier figure.
The poem uses simple, clipped diction and avoids figurative language almost entirely. This, in conjunction with short and consistent lines of iambic tetrameter, helps to convey the speaker's clear-eyed, unsparing, disillusioned attitude.
