William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1865. He lived during a period of great change as Ireland fought for independence from Britain. Important landmark events that Yeats wrote about were the 1916 Easter Rising and the Irish Civil War.

World War 1 broke out during the struggle and despite the conflict with Britain, many Irishmen enlisted to fight for Britain. Though they risked their lives they struggled with identity; they were fighting for a country that wasn’t their own.
The question of national identity was never far from Yeats' mind.

It is believed that Yeats wrote this in memory of Robert Gregory, the son of his friend Lady Gregory. Robert Gregory studied at Cambridge and the Slade School of Art. He was a successful artist before the First World War. In 1915, he joined the war effort, became a member of the Royal Flying Corps and was decorated for his outstanding contribution. He died tragically at the age of thirty-seven when an Italian pilot mistakenly shot him down.

Robert Gregory’s death had an lasting effect on Yeats, who wrote four poems about him of which this is one.

Structure
The poem consists of one stanza of sixteen lines, grouped into four four-lined stanzas known as quatrains. There is a regular rhyme-scheme; ABAB; CDCD; EFEF; GHGH. The lines are iambic tetrameters, that is four metric ‘feet’ of unstressed and stressed syllables per line. Each group of four lines explores the thoughts in the pilot’s mind as he faces his impending death.

Language and Imagery
The language is simple, largely monosyllabic, with no obscure or complex metaphors. The essence of the poem is the cool, resigned and poignant tone of the man’s thoughts and the juxtaposition of opposites throughout, for example, hate and love; the past and the future.