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Leda and the Swan
FORM AND
STRUCTURE

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CONTEXT

THEMES

QUOTES
AND
ANALYSIS

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First stanza 8 lines = Octave
Second stanza 7 lines = Sestet
It’s like a sonnet, which are conventionally love poems, so Yeats is playing
against convention
Power of the visual narrative of the poem
Written 1923
Swan = associated with mythology, in Ireland represents freedom of the spirit
Myth: Zeus disguised himself as a Swan to get close to Leda and then raped her
Yeats compared the impregnation of Leda to the impregnation of Mary, Mary
impregnated by God and Leda by Zeus, creativity can be paradoxical as it also
causes destruction (the broken wall) and the destruction that came in the wake
of Christianity

Power

The Erotic

Mythology

‘A sudden blow: the great
wings beating still Above the
staggering girl, her thighs
caressed By the dark webs, her
nape caught in his bill,’
- Adjective ‘great’ shows
the unnatural power of
the bird, the idea of this
beautiful but violent
creature
- Noun ‘girl’ suggests she
is vulnerable to his
predatory behaviour
- ‘Beating’ = Yeats
referring to the power
of males to cause pain
+ subordinate women
- ‘Nape’ = often carry
children by the nape of
their neck, reiterating
her
vulnerability/inability
to stop the swan

‘Above the staggering girl,
her thighs caressed’
- Verb‘Caressed’
creates a seductive,
almost intimate
image
- The duality of the
role of the powerful
male

‘A sudden blow: the
great wings beating still’
- ‘Beating’ =
present
participle ending
shows relevance
to the present,
it’s not just in
the past,
continuous

‘How can those terrified vague
fingers push The feathered
glory from her loosening

‘By the dark webs, her nape
caught in his bill,’
- ‘Nape’ = tender,
vulnerable place,
Yeats shows that
she is trapped
whilst creating this
erotic image
‘The feathered glory from
her loosening thighs?’
- ‘Loosening things’ =
sibilance is a
development of that
eroticism
‘And how can body, laid in
that white rush’

‘The broken wall, the
burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead
...
’
- The abstract power
- It’s transient,
impermanent
- A metaphor for her
broken wall after being
raped
‘So mastered by the brute
blood of the air, Did she put on
his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak
could let her drop?’
- The association with
these
words/connotationscr
eate an ambivalence
within the reader as to
whether she is
resisting his power or
surrendering to
pleasure
- ‘Let her drop’ =
monosyllabic, this
casual cruelty, she’s
dismissed with no
emotional attachment

-

Yeats creates a
double entendre of
sorts because the
Zeus in form of the
Swan is lying on the
girl, but he also lied
about his
appearance

‘Being so caught up… let
her drop’
- The para rhyme
suggests that its
unfinished/dissatisf
action
- Rape it’s self is
unsatisfying, an act
of artifice
- Disturbing question
of whether she
gained from this,
despite the fact that
she was exploited,
there’s an
incompleteness to
our
knowledge/underst
anding

other male

OTHER POEMS

‘The great wings beating still’
Link to Easter 1916: ‘A
terrible beauty is born,’ the
juxtaposition of beauty and
violence we see in both poems,
‘born’ with creation comes
destruction
‘The broken wall, the burning
roof and tower And
Agamemnon dead’
Link to The Second Coming:
‘The ceremony of innocence is
drowned’ the loss and
corruption of child-like
innocence in both
Link to Among School
Children: ‘Changed some
childish day to tragedy’ loss of
child like innocence by rape
‘So mastered by the brute
blood of the air’
Link to The Second Coming:
‘The blood dimmed tide is
loosed’ violence is ubiquitous,
with destruction comes blood
and pain, violence is part of
human nature

‘The feathered glory from
her loosening thighs?’
Link to An Irish Airman: ‘A
lonely impulse of delight’
he rapes Leda for a brief
moment of pleasure,
similar to how Robert
Gregory flies before death
for that short moment of
pleasure
Link to Sailing to
Byzantium: ‘Consume my
heart away; sick with
desire’ All consuming
desire/lust which can lead
to terrible things, on
Byzantium Yeats said ‘I am
trying to write about the
state of my soul,’ in both
poems there is an insight
into the inner desires one
may have, the darkness of
the soul



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