I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My county is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
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.
Italy, 1918. World War I had been ravaging Europe for almost four years. With millions dead on both sides of the conflict, it seemed like there was no end in sight. Near the end of January of that year, a thirty-seven-year-old Irish pilot was mistakenly shot down by an Italian aviator (Italy and Great Britain were allies then). An accomplished artist and cricketer (meaning, he played that British form of baseball called cricket), the young man's name was Robert Gregory, and he was the son of a woman named Lady Gregory. Both were very dear friends of Ireland's leading poet, William Butler Yeats.
Yeats was profoundly affected by Robert Gregory's death, and immediately began writing about it. Shortly after penning a short prose eulogy in February, 1918, he wrote several poems about his old friend, including "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory" and "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death." Both of these poems would be published in 1919 in the second edition of Yeats' 1917 volume, The Wild Swans at Coole (named after the swans that were part of the scenery at Coole Park, residence of Lady Gregory and frequent vacation spot for Yeats).
While "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory" is an elegy for Gregory, written from the perspective of Yeats himself, "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" is Yeats' attempt to get inside Gregory's head, so to speak, and describe Gregory's sense of life, certain death, and war.
While the poem illustrates what must have been a constant preoccupation for soldiers in the First World War (a fear of inevitable death), it also tries to come to grips with Gregory's, and many others', decision to participate in an ultimately senseless conflict. Yeats' only solution to the question of why Gregory got involved in the first place is a "lonely impulse of delight." We don't know about you, but that seems a really weird and mysterious explanation that gives us a strange feeling in our tummies.
The title "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" is reflective of the fact that the airman foresaw his impending death. This title is significant in that it reflects the fate that many people fighting in war face. They know their death is approaching them with very little they can do about it.
Speaker
This poem is recited in first person. The poet is recounting the thoughts that are going through his mind as his death approaches. This choice of voice is important because it gives insight into the thoughts of the airman fighting on the verge of death.
Setting
This poem takes place around 1916 during one of the Irish civil wars in the skies over Ireland. The mood and atmosphere created by Yeats is of a solemn, peaceful tone. The pilot sees his death forthcoming yet he does not seem regretful or scared, but rather accepts the fate he is going to encounter.
Structure
The poem is one stanza long. It is divided into four sections and in each section the first and thrid lines rhyme, as do the second and fourth. There are approximately 8 syllables per line. The simple form reflects the rather simple theme of the poem.
Speech Figures
The poem has a rhyme pattern of ababcdcdefefghgh. A metaphor present in the poem is "Drove to this tumult in the clouds." (Yeats) Through this metaphor it explains that once the narrator had reached the peak of his flight, he has also reached the peak of his life. From here he will encounter his death. Anohter example of a metaphor presented in this poem is "A waste of breath the years behind." (Yeats) This passage from the poem is a metaphor which compares the years that have past and how they were a waste of time. An example of irony found in the poem is when he says he does not love or want to protect the people of his country, yet when people go to war they usually fight with honour for their country.
Since Ireland was considered a part of The British Commonwealth, the Irish were expected to act for the good of the Mother Land. That also meant dying for the Mother Land. The Irish had no quarrel with anyone except their own rulers.
Sense To Sound
Words were chosen carefully to fit the rhyme scheme and make it more appealling to the reader with the attempt to stress every second syllable.
Summary
This poem captures the essence of the mind set of a airman facing death. This insight is what makes the poem memorable. This poem is about an Irish airman pilot fighting in the war awaiting his death. He is prepared for death because after reflecting on his life he realizes that it has been a waste of time. This is reflected in the quote, "A waste of breath the years behind / In balance with this life, this death." (Yeats)
The Kiltartan Cross was a group of Roman Catholics that were directly related to the Air Force. These people had their own tartan, or their own colors for their kilts that they wore. The different types of tartan colors signified different groups of poeple whether it be a clan of people or a military group. They are poor because they do not have their own country. Under British rule.
One of Yeats’s most beautiful and most deeply moving poems is “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory,” from his 1919 collection, The Wild Swans at Coole. You don’t need to know anything about Yeats’s three other deceased friends whom he eulogizes in this poem in addition to its main subject to be affected by it. However, the Wikipedia article on Yeat’s colleague the writer John Synge will explain the meaning of the strange line about Synge, “That dying chose the living world for text.” Also, it will help to know that “My dear friend’s dear son, / Our Sidney and our perfect man,” namely Robert Gregory, was the son of Yeats’s close friend and colleague in the Irish Literary Revival, Lady Augusta Gregory, at whose estate at Coole Park in Gort, County Galway, he often stayed and wrote many of his poems. I have visited Coole Park. The house is long since burned down, but one can walk on the extensive grounds, and the lake, about which Yeats wrote the poem, “The Wild Swans at Coole,” is still there.
The “ancient tower” to which Yeats refers in the first stanza is Thoor Ballylee (Ballylee Castle), a few miles from Coole Park, which he and his family used as their summer home between 1916 and 1929. (See photo.) Some of Yeats’s most famous poems, including “The Tower” and “A Prayer for My Daughter,” are centered here.
I’ve also copied the next poem in The Wild Swans at Coole, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” in which Yeats presents his imaginative vision of Robert Gregory’s thoughts prior to his being killed in the Great War. When the Irish airman says, “Those that I guard I do not love,” he is speaking of Great Britain, not of “My country … Kiltartan Cross,” and “My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor.” I myself was confused by those lines for some years.
In Memory of Major Robert Gregory
By W.B. Yeats
I
Now that we’re almost settled in our house
I’ll name the friends that cannot sup with us
Beside a fire of turf in the ancient tower,
And having talked to some late hour
Climb up the narrow winding stair to bed:
Discoverers of forgotten truth
Or mere companions of my youth,
All, all are in my thoughts to-night being dead.
II
Always we’d have the new friend meet the old,
And we are hurt if either friend seem cold,
And there is salt to lengthen out the smart
In the affections of our heart,
And quarrels are blown up upon that head;
But not a friend that I would bring
This night can set us quarrelling,
For all that come into my mind are dead.
III
Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind,
That loved his learning better than mankind,
Though courteous to the worst; much falling he
Brooded upon sanctity
Till all his Greek and Latin learning seemed
A long blast upon the horn that brought
A little nearer to his thought
A measureless consummation that he dreamed.
IV
And that enquiring man John Synge comes next,
That dying chose the living world for text
And never could have rested in the tomb
But that, long travelling, he had come
Towards nightfall upon certain set apart
In a most desolate stony place,
Towards nightfall upon a race
Passionate and simple like his heart.
V
And then I think of old George Pollexfen,
In muscular youth well known to Mayo men
For horsemanship at meets or at racecourses,
That could have shown how purebred horses
And solid men, for all their passion, live
But as the outrageous stars incline
By opposition, square and trine;
Having grown sluggish and contemplative.
VI
They were my close companions many a year,
A portion of my mind and life, as it were,
And now their breathless faces seem to look
Out of some old picture-book;
I am accustomed to their lack of breath,
But not that my dear friend’s dear son,
Our Sidney and our perfect man,
Could share in that discourtesy of death.
VII
For all things the delighted eye now sees
Were loved by him; the old storm-broken trees
That cast their shadows upon road and bridge;
The tower set on the stream’s edge;
The ford where drinking cattle make a stir
Nightly, and startled by that sound
The water-hen must change her ground;
He might have been your heartiest welcomer.
VIII
When with the Galway foxhounds he would ride
From Castle Taylor to the Roxborough side
Or Esserkelly plain, few kept his pace;
At Mooneen he had leaped a place
So perilous that half the astonished meet
Had shut their eyes, and where was it
He rode a race without a bit?
And yet his mind outran the horses’ feet.
IX
We dreamed that a great painter had been born
To cold Clare rock and Galway rock and thorn,
To that stern colour and that delicate line
That are our secret discipline
Wherein the gazing heart doubles her might.
Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,
And yet he had the intensity
To have published all to be a world’s delight.
X
What other could so well have counselled us
In all lovely intricacies of a house
As he that practised or that understood
All work in metal or in wood,
In moulded plaster or in carven stone?
Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,
And all he did done perfectly
As though he had but that one trade alone.
XI
Some burn damp faggots, others may consume
The entire combustible world in one small room
As though dried straw, and if we turn about
The bare chimney is gone black out
Because the work had finished in that flare.
Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,
As ‘twere all life’s epitome.
What made us dream that he could comb grey hair?
XII
I had thought, seeing how bitter is that wind
That shakes the shutter, to have brought to mind
All those that manhood tried, or childhood loved,
Or boyish intellect approved,
With some appropriate commentary on each;
Until imagination brought
A fitter welcome; but a thought
Of that late death took all my heart for speech.
这首诗翻译时的关键有好几处.但其中最关键的是A lonely impulse of deight.这句,lonely不应该是寂寞之意,它是独自,单独之意,这唡种意思相差甚远,寂寞是一种孤独感垄罩下的产物,是一种远离自己後,想要找人的渴望,它是一种依赖,但是作者的描述中的军人是那么的自在独立,连死都不惧怕,甚至希望自己就在云端的某一处结束自己,这样超脱生死的人怎可能是害怕孤独,不甘寂寞者,反观单独这字,它是一个人喜欢和自己在一起,爱上自己,享受自己,它带来的是一种宁静,一种可以遇见自己,看见彼岸的兴奋.
I do not think it is the worthlessness of the airman's life, but rather the "balance" between life and death, in keeping with Yeats' belief in a cyclic time. I think it is also about a moral debate within the airman's mind: "I balanced all". When it comes to life and death, man's responsibility is crucial (Yeats wrote a book of poems called Responsibilities). And finally, this is also an Irish point of view during World War 1 and what it means to fight alongside the British, while at the same time there was a war of independence against Britain going on in Ireland.
Written as an elegy to Major Robert Gregory, the son of Lady Gregory – Yeats’ good friend, that lived at Coole Park, with whom he led the artistic revolution in Ireland (for more information on Augusta Gregory see the blog page on Yeats’ Women).
It has been inferred through the remaining letters written by Major Robert Gregory that he did (perhaps) not much like Yeats.
Gregory lived in the small town ‘Kiltartan’ which is referred to into the poem
– ‘My country is Kiltartan Cross,/My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,’
Those that fought for the British in World War I were considered traitors to the Irish people by the IRB. There are reports to the fact that many that survived the war (or their families if the men themselves had not survived the conflict) were later murdered by the IRB/A for choosing to align themselves with the ‘enemy’ during those years of conflict. The British recruited vigorously for soldiers from Ireland – even encamping outside pubs to recruit men who often were not in a sober-enough state of mind to refuse the enlisting process.
The Poem
Prolific uses of personal pronouns – the use of such pronouns suggests that it was intended as a personal poem, not public. Yeats is possibly mourning his loss.
The poem, written in the persona of Gregory (or at least a soldier in a similar mound to Gregory), contemplates his motives for, and the worth of, his seemingly inevitable death. The poem is certain from the beginning that he ‘shall meet [his] fate/Somewhere among the clouds above,’ – he has signed up for the British Army, certain that he will die.
The ‘airman’ attempts to find the elusive meaning that he fights for through a process of elimination;
‘Those that I fight I do not hate’ – Ireland did not feel threatened by WWI and the Germans.
‘Those that I guard I do not love’ – He was fighting for Britain, who had oppressed the Irish for centuries.
‘No likely end could bring them [his countrymen] loss’ – Stoic philosophy – Life will moves on, he will be forgotten and if they lose the war that he is fighting for, may not be effected at all.
‘Or leave them happier than before’ – winning the war would not benefit Ireland in any way, may just refocus English attention and military presence on them.
No ‘public men’ ‘bade [him] fight’ – As Yeats frequently refers to himself as a public man (see notes on ‘Among School Children’); these lines may be Yeats’ attempt to distance himself from any involvement in Gregory’s motivations to align himself with the British and thus ultimately for his death.
The airman concludes, phrased as if he is writing posthumously, that it is ‘A lonely impulse of delight’ that he pursued, that drove him to fly and fight and that as ‘the years to come seemed waste of breath,/ A waste of breath the years behind’ all that’s left is for him to balance his wasted life, with his death. (‘In balance with this life, this death.’)
The ‘lonely impulse of delight’ is slightly ambiguous; it is most likely the Lakists’ Romantic ideal of a moment of pure emotion, as in ‘The Cold Heaven’ – ‘Ah!’ This moment he experiences away from all other humans flying in the clouds, transcending the physical limits of humans with the ethereal feel that flying ‘somewhere in among the clouds above’ has. It is almost as if the persona has touched/felt something forbidden to most mere mortals; this highly Romantic statement echoes the great Romantic poets (Shelley/Keats/Wordsworth).
Structure/Form
Tight structure – echoes the certainty that he will die
Iambic tetrameter
The only caesura is on line before the ending two words ‘this death’ – emphasising the death and the balance to the rest of the poem – his life. Alternatively it could be him faltering; losing the certainty he had throughout the poem that death was the only option.
Links
Conflicts with ‘The Man and the Echo’ where Yeats feels ‘there is no release in bodkin or disease’ (in death).
The Airman has broken from the flow of life, become stationary and committed to die as if ‘enchanted to stone’ – a metaphor used in ‘Easter 1916.’
‘Waste of breath’ linked to ‘drank the wind’ in ‘Among School Children’ – both suggest the lack of substance in life/politics.
当他们在1916年四月二十四日复活节星期一占领邮政总局(General Post Office)时,起义领袖们宣告成立一个自由的爱尔兰共和国,其中平等主义是它的最重要的意愿。中午刚过,帕特里克∙柏思(Patrick Pearse)在邮政总局的台阶上宣读了宣言,声明爱尔兰人民的权力是自主的。它盼望着在民主自决的民主主义原则和被人民认同的基础上建立起一个当地政府。由于1916年的起义,导致了爱尔兰从英国统治中分裂开来的不可阻挡的进程。
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