An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
I know that I shall meet my fateSomewhere among the clouds above;Those that I fight I do not hateThose that I guard I do not love;My country is Kiltartan Cross,My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,No likely end could bring them lossOr leave them happier than before.Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,Nor public man, nor angry crowds,A lonely impulse of delightDrove to this tumult in the clouds;I balanced all, brought all to mind,The years to come seemed waste of breath,A waste of breath the years behindIn balance with this life, this death.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- somewhere adv.
- In some place unknown or not specified; in one place or another.
- bade
- A form of the pat tense of Bid.
- angry a.
- Troublesome; vexatious; rigorous. [See Anger.]
- drove n.
- A collection of cattle driven, or cattle collected for driving; a number of animals, as oxen, sheep, or swine, driven in a body. [AS. draf, fr. drifan to drive. See Drive.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Wild Swans at Coole, Project Gutenberg ebook #32491; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: W. B. Yeats, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, in The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32491, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-wild-swans/an-irish-airman-foresees-his-death.html, id L20000.
Form and metre
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death is 16 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABABC-C-DEDEFGFG fateA · aboveB · hateA · loveB · crossC · poor · lossC · before · fightD · crowdsE · delightD · cloudsE · mindF · breathG · behindF · deathG
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I know that I shall meet my fate | 8 | ········ |
| Somewhere among the clouds above; | 8 | /······· |
| Those that I fight I do not hate | 8 | ········ |
| Those that I guard I do not love; | 8 | ········ |
| My country is Kiltartan Cross, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| My countrymen Kiltartan's poor, | 8 | ·/˘˘···· |
| No likely end could bring them loss | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Or leave them happier than before. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Nor public man, nor angry crowds, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| A lonely impulse of delight | 8 | ·/˘/˘·˘/ |
| Drove to this tumult in the clouds; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| I balanced all, brought all to mind, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| The years to come seemed waste of breath, | 8 | ········ |
| A waste of breath the years behind | 8 | ········ |
| In balance with this life, this death. | 8 | ·/˘····· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.