Leda and the Swan (William Butler Yeats)
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"Leda and the Swan" is a poem by William Butler Yeats first published in 1928. Combining psychological realism with a mystic vision, it describes the swan's raping of Leda.
- 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.
- 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?
- A shudder in the loins engenders there
- The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
- And Agamemnon dead.
- 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?
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