An Irish Airman foresees his Death Literary Elements

The speaker is the Irish airman named in the title, and is loosely based on Robert Gregory, the son of Yeats's friend Lady Augusta Gregory.

Sixteen lines of iambic tetrameter with an ABABCDCDEFEFGHGH rhyme scheme.

The poem avoids metaphor and simile, contributing to its tone of blunt, disillusioned forwardness.

The repeated phrase "Those that" uses alliterative Th sounds. The line "My country is Kiltartan Cross" uses alliterative K and C sounds, and the line "I balanced all, brought all to mind," uses alliterative B sounds.

The phrase "to this tumult" uses assonant long U sounds.

While the speaker is forced to give his life because of political stances that rob him of autonomy, he ultimately finds a degree of agency in his experience of war.

Elegy

An airplane used in combat in World War I

Blunt, Stark, Rueful

Protagonist: the speaker. Antagonist: the imperialist policies and structures that oppress the speaker and the Irish people.

The poem's major conflict is between the speaker on the one hand, and the external forces of war and imperialism, which threaten the speaker's life, on the other.

The work's climax is the speaker's description of the "lonely impulse of delight" that motivates him.

The poem's title, as well as its first line, foreshadow in very explicit terms the speaker's eventual death at war.

The claim "Those that I guard I do not love" describes the speaker's resentment of British rule in understated terms. He claims only not to love those on whose behalf he fights, but does not speak of any negative emotions toward them.

The poem alludes to Kiltartan, the region in Ireland where Lady Gregory and her son Robert Gregory lived. The poem in general responds to the death of Robert Gregory, though it does not make explicit reference to him.

"Breath" is used as a metonymic substitute for life itself.

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The speaker's claim that both his past and his future are a "waste of breath" is somewhat hyperbolic.

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