Leda and the Swan
A sudden blow: the great wings beating stillAbove the staggering girl, her thighs caressedBy the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers pushThe feathered glory from her loosening thighs?And how can body, laid in that white rushBut feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders thereThe broken wall, the burning roof and towerAnd Agamemnon dead.Being so caught up,So mastered by the brute blood of the air,Did she put on his knowledge with his powerBefore the indifferent beak could let her drop?
About this text
Leda and the Swan is in the public domain. This text is taken from The tower, Project Gutenberg ebook #72985; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: W. B. Yeats, Leda and the Swan, in The Tower (1928), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #72985, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/yeats-tower/leda-and-the-swan.html, id L19975.
Form and metre
Leda and the Swan is 15 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABAB stillA · caressedB · billA · breastB
- 2 -A-A push · thighsA · rush · liesA
- 3 AB--AB- thereA · towerB · dead · up · airA · powerB · drop
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| A sudden blow: the great wings beating still | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed | 10 | ···/˘···˘/ |
| By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, | 10 | ·········· |
| He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| How can those terrified vague fingers push | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| And how can body, laid in that white rush | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| A shudder in the loins engenders there | 10 | ·/˘···/˘˘· |
| The broken wall, the burning roof and tower | 11 | ·/˘··/˘··/˘ |
| And Agamemnon dead. | 6 | ··˘/·· |
| Being so caught up, | 5 | /˘··· |
| So mastered by the brute blood of the air, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Did she put on his knowledge with his power | 11 | ·····/˘··/˘ |
| Before the indifferent beak could let her drop? | 11 | ···˘/˘····· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.