William Butler Yeats, Leda and the swan

When I first read William Butler Yeats’ poem, « Leda and the Swan », I barely understood that it was a poem that discribes an incidence of rape. I figured that there must have been something that I misunderstood, because the mix between rape and phrases hintting towards the presence of a bird did not seem like they should coincide. Never-the-less, I felt the poem’s sinister, violent nature through the language the poet uses. “Staggering”, “helpless”, “terrified”, “mastered”… Despite my ignorance at the time of what the poem discussed, a chill traversed me as I read the words. I knew it discussed something dark and cold. The poem sparked my curiosity; I wanted to know what the poem really meant, whether the words suggesting the presence of a bird, are simply figurative, a metaphor, or if they are truly representative of a literal bird. After a little research, I discovered that the poem is actually based on a myth.

“Leda and the Swan” is an ancient Greek myth. Leda, wife of king Tydareus and mother of many noble children, was a very beautiful woman. So much so that she caught the eye of Zeus, the God believed by the Greek to be the God of all other Gods. When Leda refused to couple with Zeus, he turned himself into a

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Yeats also uses synecdoche as a technique, also helping in the retelling of a story in a beautiful manner. “How can the terrified vague fingers push the feathered glory from her loosening thighs?” and “how can body, laid in that white rush, but feel the strange heart beating where it lies?” These two rhetorical questions, are what constitute the second stanza. Had she been completely opposed to the situation, she would have remained tense, but the loosening of her thighs suggests, once again, that she is giving into Zeus’ actions. swan to in order to enable himself to mate with her, regardless of her refusal.

“Leda and the Swan”, is an Elizabethan sonnet, despite it’s somewhat unusual layout. We are lead to believe that Leda is torn between repulsion and constentment for what she is undergoing. This is unusual, but still does not change its classification. The poem beautifully describes a story using simple language; all the words are monosyllabic or bisyllabic. ” Because it is said in the first tercet, the stanza describing the sexual climax followed by the rape’s end, it is seemingly as though Zeus is already foreseeing the murder of Agamemnon; which could not have been, without him raping Leda. The answer to this is subjective; to each their own opinion. In the first tercet, there is yet another alliteration; the consonance “b”, which is seen through “broken”, “burning”, “being”, ‘brute”, “blood” and “beak”. Furthermore, during the second quatrain, the one discussing the raping of Leda, the poet describes her thighs as loosening. The poem is discussing this event, Leda being raped by a swan. It is beautifully written, and I am glad that I took the time to thoroughly analyse it.

Approximate Word count = 1506
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

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