This study looks at two poems written just after “The Great War,” a time of high emotion and economic change. William Butler Yeats’ “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” written in 1919, is a monologue spoken by a WWI lone fighter pilot, determined to face his death in the skies. Edward Arlington Robinson’s “The Mill,” written in 1920, is a third-person narrative which follows the fate of a miller and his wife, whose livelihood has been destroyed by the new industrial economy. By the end of the poem, both spouses have committed suicide. Or have they? Robinson in particular uses effective language techniques to give the reader more than just the surface words to analyze.
Each poet weaves various poetic elements to heighten their texts’ meanings, including similar themes, intense language and rich imagery, and identical rhyme scheme and meter. Both poems easily draw the reader in from beginning to end. Despite the similarities, there are easily some distinctions. In “The Mill,” for instance, some evidence suggests that Robinson cleverly uses sentence structure and punctuation to cause the reader to rethink his conclusions, only to feel compelled to read the poem again, then again.
The similar themes offer a basis of comparison and help establish the meanings of each poem. Yeats and Robinson each employ nameless characters that feel death at their doorstep, but from there the themes diverge. In “The Mill,” the reader senses a greater depth of tragedy as the miller and his wife lose their livelihood against their will, at the hands of the economy. In contrast, Yeats’ speaker in “Irish Airman” fully accepts his fate as a fighter pilot, without any sense that his inevitable demise is at the hands of some outside force. His is a sense of destiny without regret: his death will occur while flying passionately through the clouds, not because of some occupational failure. With these parallel themes of how the characters view their fates, each poet offers the meanings underlying the poems. The airman chooses his fate. The millers, however, are not so lucky. This difference in perspective allows the reader to feel more empathy for the miller and his wife, and their unfortunate circumstances.
While both poems are filled with intense language, Robinson uses it in an unusually effective way. The key strength in “The Mill” lies in Robinson’s ability to say something critical in the poem without saying it directly. His choice of third-person narration is particularly important in this respect because he can manipulate language without quoting the speaker(s) directly in nearly every line of the poem. It is worth noting how he weaves this wordplay throughout the text.
The images in “The Mill” help advance the meaning in the poem more effectively than in Yeats’ “Airman.” This is primarily due to the number of stanzas in each, and how each stanza functions as a separate scene. The first stanza in “The Mill” introduces the miller’s wife, whose “thoughts” narrate the action. She has waited long for her husband’s return, next to a dead fire in their living room. The tragic theme of loss and resignation is firmly established in line five, in which she recalls her husband lingering at the door and stating to her simply, “There are no millers anymore.” This line is critical. It is the one and only direct quote from either of the characters in the poem. With this one line, Robinson puts the reader directly into the mind of the defeated miller, whose hopelessness underlies the crux of the poem and sets the rest of the images in motion.
Robinson’s effective technique of stating things indirectly becomes clear in the second and third stanzas. At the start of the second, upon thinking of her husband’s comment, the wife is “Sick with a fear that had no form” (9). She then “follows” the miller to the mill, in hopes of finding him. Instead, “…what was hanging from a beam / Would not have heeded where she went” (15-16). The inference here is that, with the stanza’s scene set in the mill, and no other character or object besides the miller having been introduced, what is hanging from the beam is the miller himself. The image is created for the reader without the literal words. His clever word choices continue in the third and final stanza, which leaves the reader with a haunting vision. Here, the focus is on the wife, after seeing her dead husband. “Where she went” as she “reasoned in the dark” (18), is someplace that “Would hide her and leave no mark” (20). By this, she wishes to be gone, without a trace. In the final lines of the poem, she sets off to the milldam next to the mill and sees the
Black water, smooth above the weir
Like starry velvet in the night,
Though ruffled once, would soon appear
The same as ever to the sight. (21-24)
Without being stated explicitly, the poem’s carefully chosen words indicate the wife takes her life in the milldam waters. The reader, in Robinson’s skilled hands, is an eyewitness to a double suicide.
The language and imagery are used to different effects in Yeats’ poem, primarily because the emotional distance is greater in “Airman” than in “The Mill.” The airman claims that “Those that I fight I do not hate / Those that I guard I do not love” (3-4). With this the reader quickly senses that there will not be much emotional rapport with the speaker, who is emotionally disconnected from others. The airman addresses only himself in the monologue. Yeats’ language is direct, with simple statements made by the pilot to express his existential outlook. There is no “hidden” language, as in “The Mill.” Yeats’ first-person speaker technique is effective, however, and he uses it to full advantage. It allows the reader to hear the speaker through the speaker’s own words throughout the entire poem (unlike the third-person narrative technique in “The Mill”). Granted, here, the emotion is between the airman and himself. The reader doesn’t experience the same fear and despair that we feel for the miller and his wife.
The intense language is clear and commanding in Yeats’ poem, but there is not the contextual layer of unspoken words that the reader gains in Robinson’s. Here, the airman describes his reason for flying:
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. (9-12)
This lack of connection with anyone other than himself is Yeats’ point: the pilot’s death will be caused by him alone. The poem is written in one stanza, as if one running thought of the pilot. The pilot’s resolute words are laid out before us, with no ambiguity or uncertainties.
The imagery is effective but not as extensive or necessary in Yeats’ poem, as it focuses on the pilot’s thoughts, not on tangible settings or particular scenes for the reader to follow. A clear declaration of the pilot’s mindset opens the poem: “I know that I shall meet my fate / Somewhere among the clouds above” (1-2). There is a lack of self-pity in his realization, unlike the miller’s sad quote in “The Mill.” The pilot states his existential claim in the poem’s last four lines:
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. (13-16)
This sums up the speaker’s philosophy without needing to set a particular scene for the reader. We can simply imagine him in flight, at peace when the moment of death finally arrives. The image of the pilot possibly ascending to “the clouds above” at the outset of the poem allows the reader to imagine the airman on his last flight, as we hear his last words. This is powerful imagery in and of itself, but the reader isn’t given any particular change in scenery.
The poetic elements of sound and rhythm play a role in each poem, but a particularly strong one in “The Mill” due to the unfolding events. Both poems are written in the same rhythm, iambic tetrameter. This consists of 8 syllables, one unstressed followed by one stressed, which helps the reader move carefully through each line. This is especially effective in “The Mill” because the reader is curious about what is going to happen next, as we follow the miller’s wife from stanza to stanza. In “Airman” the poem is written as one stanza, or scene. The rhythm moves musically from line to line, but not to any particular “destination.” The reader simply experiences the thoughts of the airman alongside him, without needing to “go somewhere.”
Finally, sentence structure and punctuation provide a vital key to interpretation of “The Mill.” Obviously both poems use these elements, but upon close examination there appears to be more than one way to interpret Robinson’s poem. It can be argued that if you break the poem down by each word and punctuation mark, there is yet another underlying layer that Robinson reveals, again without laying it out directly for the reader. In her 1993 essay on the poem, poet and teacher Glorianna Locklear (Highbeam) proposes that, given that Robinson “works in layers of ambiguity…the..evidence …rests largely on [his] subtle handling of verb tenses, sentence structure, and punctuation” (Locklear). Her extensive argument on these elements makes for fascinating reading for those willing to do a fine-grain analysis on Robinson’s true intent. The crux of her analysis is that based on these elements of the poem, the careful reader will deduce that all of the action after the miller’s quote occurs in the wife’s mind. Locklear's proof includes Robinson's use of various conditional clauses, such as “And there might yet be” (3), as well as speculative memory, as in “And he lingered at the door / So long that it seemed yesterday” (7-8). In this study, these speculative comments show no indication that the wife has gotten up from her chair by the fire.
Locklear also notes that throughout the poem, “the verbs are all conditional,” as in “She may have reasoned” (18) and “water would soon appear” (23)”. Further, she points out that the final stanza begins with “And if,” which “cast[s] the entire stanza into the speculative mode” (Locklear). The semi-colons also allow for dependency on all of these speculative clauses, as in the second one that appears in the poem: “She knew that she was there at last; / And in the mill there was a warm / And mealy fragrance of the past” (10-12). For Locklear, this semi-colon indicates that what follows is merely the product of the wife’s “fear that had no form” (9) from the previous line; that the following scenes are simply imagined (Locklear).
Yeats’ “Irish Airman” obviously uses sentence structure and punctuation, including semi-colons, but there are no conditional clauses in the poem that suggest ambiguities of thought or interpretation. There is a simplicity of language and structure that moves the reader along, but as a distant observer to a death that will occur, someday. In this respect, the pilot feels about his death much as the reader does; it is expected and not worth being troubled over.
In the end, both poems are written with language and rhythmic elements that feel right for each. Obviously Yeats and Robinson were both poetic masters that knew what they were trying to express with each poem. For the reader, it is a matter of preference. Do you want your poem straight up, or with a twist? Both are here in fine form. No-nonsense language from Yeats, and an expertly woven reminder from Robinson that lurking beneath some poems are unspoken worlds, waiting to be uncovered.
WORKS CITED
Ferguson, Margaret, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy, eds. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. 5th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2005.
Locklear, Glorianna. “Robinson’s ‘The Mill.’” The Explicator 51.3 (Spring 1993). 27 Sept. 2007 http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/robinson/mill.htm.
Robinson, Edward Arlington. “The Mill.” Ferguson, Salter, and Stallworthy 1214-1215.
Yeats, William Butler. “The Irish Airman Foresees His Death.” Ferguson, Salter, and Stallworthy 1193.
WORK CONSULTED
Highbeam Research. “Locklear, Glorianna”. 27 Sept. 2007 http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-134176124.html
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