Leda and the Swan

In fifteen lines, a lot can be said, especially in poetry. William Butler Yates wrote “Leda and the Swan” with thought and a heavy mind, stretching it beyond bounds for meaning, imagery and allusions to life and literature. If not read slowly, the poem could be misinterpreted and much of the meaning Yates had strived to include in the poem is lost to the quick blind mind reading it. Beginning with the imagery, Yates describes the bird’s attack on Leda, having his “great wings” being the first things described in line one. Later, in lines three and four, the “dark webs” are the swan’s webbed feet, because their feet are black. Also in line four, Leda’s breast is personified as being helpless as in the entire poem, she is helpless and weak to the bird’s attack Then Yates describes how the swan grabs her neck and presses himself against her. In lines five and six, Yates describes Leda’s fingers as terrified, personifying her fingers as being scared, noting how they are a part of her and how she is also terrified. In line six, Yates uses the phrase “feathered glory” to describe the swan’s genitals, as the swan is supposed to be the Greek God, Zeus and ‘glory’ was used to describe something great or divine like the gods. The structure of the poem consists of the form, rhyme and meter of the entire piece. The poem is a petrarchan sonnet, comprised of fourteen lines and has a major shift after the eighth line. The first eight lines describe the act of rape from the victim’s point of view, which is sometimes the worst way to see it. However, at the ninth line, the description of sex stops, and Yeats switches the focus to another topic (mentioned in the next section). Yeats separates line eleven to make the phrase more powerful, and then shifts back to Leda’s perspective. Because the iambic pentameter is difficult and a little forced, it might be difficult for one to