The poem describes the mythical rape of Leda by Zeus, who had transformed into a swan. It depicts the violent and nonconsensual act, with Leda held helpless in the swan's grasp. The rape has further implications, as it leads to the birth of Helen and the starting of the Trojan War. Yeats uses the metaphor to represent how humans are shaped by forces beyond their control and swept up in larger historical events.

1. Leda and the Swan
W.B. Yeats
Written 1923.
Published in
‘The Tower’ (1928)

3. 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,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

4. How can those 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?

5. A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower 10
And Agamemnon dead.

6. Being so caught up,
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?

7. “[This is] the greatest poem of the 20th century…all human beings, like
Leda, are caught up moment by moment in the white rush of experience.
For Yeats, the only salvation is the shapeliness and stillness of Art.”
Camille Paglia (2006)
The poem alludes to the mythical rape of Leda, wife of Tyndareus, King of
Sparta, by the god Zeus, in the form of a swan. Leda then gave birth to 3 eggs.
One contained Castor and Clytemnestra, one Helen and Pollux and one lay
unhatched. Clytemnestra married Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, Helen married
Agamemnon’s brother, Menelaus, and when Helen ran off with Paris to
Troy, Agamemnon led the Greek invasion to get her back thus precipitating the
Trojan War. Upon his return from the Trojan War, Clytemnestra murders her
husband to be with her lover…
‘What would break the third shell?’
WB Yeats ‘A Vision’ (1937)

8. The poem is clearly metaphorical but what for? Political - a poem about
England’s relationship with Ireland? Or the patriarchy that still exists in the
modern world? Religious - about man’s relationship with God? Personal –
about the difference between youth and age? Or something else?
In 1896 Yeats wrote ‘another
Leda would open her knees to Yeats’ theory of the gyres sees this fictional rape
the swan and begin a new as ‘the annunciation that founded Greece’ and
age…’ the historical era 2000BC-1AD. The birth of Helen
initiating the Trojan War. ‘The Annunciation of
Mary’ began the second age 1AD-2000BC…what
poem by Yeats seems to announce a new era…?
1919-1921 Anglo-Irish War
1922-1923 Irish Civil War
Try to look beyond the unpleasant central
metaphor of the rape and see the poem as an
aesthetic experience like the painting. Look at the
diction – can it be viewed as erotic? Is it just
unpleasantly brutal? Or is it necessarily graphic?

9. ‘Nothing is more possible but some movement, or birth from
above, preceded by some violent annunciation. My fancy began to play
with Leda and the Swan for metaphor and I began this poem; but as I
wrote, bird and lady took such possession of the scene that all politics went
out of it.’
WB Yeats
The poet is ‘taken possession of’ by the metaphor in the
same way that Leda is taken possession of by the swan.
What might the swan represent now?
In terms of gender politics, is it ever acceptable to use rape as
a metaphor for other ideas or experiences? Remember, this
rape is fictional. How might a Christian view the association
of a classical, pagan, bestial rape with the miracle of the
annunciation of Mary by the Archangel Gabriel?
Q. Write a short paragraph explaining how each of these quotes relate or help
contextualise your understanding of the poem ‘Leda and the Swan’.