Leda and the Swan

Yeats follows form of Italian sonnet - 8 lines and 6 lines - volta between 8th and 9th. 

- sonnets usually about love, in iambic pentameter, 14 lines and rhyming cuplet. 

- takes conventional form and makes it unconventional - v. eratic form. 

Zeus turns himself into a swan to **** Leda - she gives birth to two daughters, Clytemnestra and Helen of Troy - cause war and death - but v. beautiful. 

Mary also techically impregnated by God - gave birth to a son who brought peace and salvation - gyre theory. 

"A sudden blow: the great wings beating still" 

- sudden = reminiscent of Cold Heaven - more violent. 

- caesura = seems harsher - backs up violence - broken and disjointed. 

- begins with violence - blow= hitting her - horrible. 

- great wings = he's very big - overpowering her - maginificent as well - GOD. 

- beating still implies he has been beating her for a long time - more horrible. 

- ejnambemtn onto next line. 

"Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed"

- staggering - hit her so hard that she staggers - can't run away - overpowered - staggering from fear. 

- caressing thighs = sinister and horrible - just hit her and now caressing her. 

- doesn't really love her clearly. 

- enjambement again. 

"By the dark webs, her nape…