Chapter 8 Poem: "Leda and the Swan"

The poem “Leda and the Swan” by William Butler Yeats is about the ancient Greek myth of Leda, who was seduced by the god Zeus while he was in the form of a swan. Their coupling resulted in the births of Helen, Clytemnestra, Castor, and Pollux. The poem alludes to the fates of the children: “A shudder in the loins engenders there / The broken wall, the burning roof and tower / And Agamemnon dead” (9-11). Helen is most well known for being the predominant cause of the Trojan War between the city of Troy and the Greek nations. After ten years of fighting, the Greeks tricked the Trojans by building a hollow horse, which they hid inside, and leaving it as an offering to the gods. The Trojans took the horse as a spoil of war and had to break their own city’s great walls to bring the horse inside. At night, the Greeks emerged from the horse and burnt the city to the ground. Once the war ended, the Greek leader Agamemnon returned to his home in Mycenae and was killed by his wife Clytemnestra because he had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia before the war. The allusion to the destructive and murderous fates of Helen and Clytemnestra highlight the violence of Leda and Zeus’s relationship. Modern descriptions of most Greek myths about gods and mortals having children together depict the god seducing the mortal women, but according to the original myths, their relationships were often violent and resulted in rape. This sort of violence is referenced several times in the poem by the use of words such as “helpless,” “terrified,” and “brute” (lines 4, 5, and 13). Alluding to the future destruction and pain caused by her daughters emphasizes Leda’s own destruction and pain at that time because of Zeus’s actions.