Key Facts

• Poet: William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
• Original Title: An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
• Written Time: Around 1918 (during World War I)
• First Published: 1919, in the collection The Wild Swans at Coole
• Form: Dramatic Monologue / Lyric Poem
• Genre: War Poetry, Philosophical Poetry, and Elegy
• Tone: Calm, Reflective, Stoic, and Fatalistic
• Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDCD EFEFGHGH (regular alternating rhyme)
• Meter: Iambic Tetrameter
• Point of View: First Person (spoken by the airman himself)
• Summary in a Line: An Irish pilot calmly accepts his death in war. He is fighting neither for hate nor for love, but from a lonely personal impulse.
• Total Lines: 16
• Total Stanzas: 1 (a single continuous stanza)

• Setting:

• Time Setting: World War I (1914–1918)
• Place Setting: The skies over Europe, symbolically “among the clouds above.”