Home > An Irish Airman Foresees His Death Summary & Study Guide

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)

The Poem

“An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” is a short dramatic monologue, originally one of four poems written by William Butler Yeats to commemorate the death of Major Robert Gregory, son of Lady Augusta Gregory (Yeats’s onetime patron and later his colleague). Gregory, never a close personal friend of Yeats, was a multitalented Renaissance man, titled Irish gentry, athlete, aviator, scholar, and artist who, even though over the age for compulsory military service, enlisted in World War I. He did so because it was a magnificent avenue for adventure.

The poem is...

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