W.B.Yeats And Leda And The Swan

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However, some say that Helen was a daughter of Nemesis and Zeus and brought (in egg form) to Leda by a shepherd. When the egg hatched, Leda brought her up. Legends also say that Leda died of shame for her daughter Helen. As an aside, Castor and Polydeuces were also known as Castor and Pollux, the twins of Gemini.
The first quatrain of Yeats' work describes the initial encounter between woman and bird. The swan, normally a symbol of beauty, is here depicted as brutish, holding Leda's nape (back of the neck) with his bill, and forcing himself on her. Yet, paradoxically, the bestial swan is also tender, the webs of his wings caressing her thighs. This is also a factor in the next stanza
Quatrain two finds Leda perhaps beginning to yield to the Zeus-swan, because of the swan's beauty more than anything else. We see an inner struggle as Leda wants to push away the bird, but is stopped by its "feathered glory" (6). Its "strange heart beating where it lies" (8) fascinates her, ...

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that had been set into motion with Zeus' rape of her.
Writing the poem in a Petrarchan sonnet, Yeats sets a tone from the first three words: "A sudden blow" (1). Immediately, we are emotionally involved in the poem. His words indicate to the readers how suddenly and unexpectedly the rape of Leda begins. Yeats writes in the octave the events prior to the union of Zeus and Leda, and the in sestet the ensuing events and visions of them. Though not immediately obvious due, in part, to the shocking aspect of the subject matter and beauty of Yeats' language, we can see that the poem does indeed have a rhyme scheme, following the ababcdcd efgefg pattern.
In the octave, Yeats creates an image ...

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