Cite This Page To Go An Irish Airman Foresees His Death An Irish
Airman Foresees His Death by W.B. Yeats  Sound Check  Read this
poem aloud. What do you hear?  This poem sounds like a
meditation that the speaker might say quietly to himself while
he's waiting, a meditation that he might write down in his
journal, or maybe to his family back home. Whoever may have read
it, they (like us) would have noticed that this is a very, very
repetitive poem. Anaphora is all over the place here (lines 3-4,
5-6, and 9-10), and so is alliteration (the beginning L sounds
in "leave," "law," "lonely," for example). Toss into the mix the
strict rhyme scheme (ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH), and the repetition of
certain words and phrase ("clouds," "waste of breath") and you
have a poem that is even more repetitive than a children's song.
So, the poem says the same things and uses the same sounds over
and over. So what? Well, did you notice how certain the speaker
is that he will die? It's not just a given, it's a guarantee.
The sounds a