An Irish Airman Forsees His Death

A Knight of the Air in the Great War to end all wars, this Airman, most likely in the uniform of the British has no malice for his German enemy, and no true love for this Anglo brethren since he has a true allegience to the Irish of his Kiltartan Cross country in Ireland. They, being so bereft of everything already due to the plundering of the English, will lose little with his passing. He is a true volunteer, fighting on impulse alone, looking for meaning in life but not finding it. Now the time is near for his final fight and sensing it, he sees the time he will not have, no longer necessary, and the time he has had--amounting to nothing, and knows that all he can achieve is a balance with his coming death. This poem has intimations toward the thoughts Yates must have been having when he wrote, "What Then." Very much the kind of mind set one might have to write both these works.

I believe that what has been mentioned above is quite accurate.
Just in addition to that, I personally see the poem as being that of a romantic suicide in a sense. I say this because he's there by choice, as we see in the lines "Nor law, nor duty bade me fight.. A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds". He believes that change will come to his country, but, in the end, they will end up in a similar situation as seen in the quote, "no likely end could bring them los Or leave them happier than before."
He basically describes his life to date a waste of time, and doesn't see much change for the future (if he would have one). It seems he isn't truly bothered by the fact that he will die. It almost seems correct.

This poem was reqested by Yeat's good friens Lady Gregory, who had just lost a son in the 1st WW. I like the term used above of a "romantic suicide" although I do not think that this impulse has anything to do with the politcal implictions we can see before in the poem.The boy seems to think that death will bring balance to his exsistance, this is omnipresent throughout the poem, the stucture, 16 linesmetered in iambic pentametres and the aba rhyming scheme bring out the balanced effect. We can also see this in the last line; "In balance with this life, this death". Yeats seems to have a cyclical view of death, death seems to be vut the cetre point of his "gyre" as we can also see by the bobbin image in Byzantium.

I researched why William Butler Yeats wrote this poem and I found that it was under a request from a lady friend, Gregory, upon the death of her son in the British Air Force during World War I. The poem was meant to be his epitaph. The young man had no reason to fight in World War I. He was and Irish man, as stated in the title of the poem, and his country was not under attack. He fought in the war because he could and because he got a certain rush of adrenaline from fighting in combat. The first two lines of the poem just state that he knows he will die in this war and that he is flying. The next two point out the fact that he is not fighting this war for a purpose, but just because he can. He doesn’t hate the people that he is fighting against, but he doesn’t love the ones that he guards either because they are not his countrymen. In the following two lines he says that his country in Kiltartan Cross, which is where Lady Gregory lives. I think in the next two lines he is speaking in the minds of his countrymen and that if he helps them win the war they will not feel anymore happy. In the next two lines he is just saying that he was not forced to fight and that no one influenced him to do so. The following lines say that it was just a sudden impulse to come and fly. In the final four lines I think that he is stating that he did not see any reason to keep on living and that to die would not be a tragedy, but a way of equalizing his life with his death. Possibly his life was not filled with planned out things and just sudden impulses and he thought that he should die doing something of sudden impulse.

Do you know a pilot?A pilot of the war, it matters not which...dont you see? It is there that they live..live or die, balance it all..The days ahead will be waiting to live again or die...
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove 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 behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Once having flown and loved flight...it is a consolation indeed an epitaph that he was only alive
in that balanced place....in flight...even if he knew it was death, before him....this is where his live both began and should end.

That was hs love his delight, that was his life and his death. There in flight.