Leda and the Swan

The poem opens with the moment when Zeus, appearing in the form of a swan, seizes Queen Leda. The speaker emphasizes the swiftness and brutality of the act, describing it as “A sudden blow” (Line 1), with “the great wings beating still / Above the staggering girl” (Lines 1-2). Since the encounter is a “sudden blow” that leaves Leda “staggering,” the act’s sexual violence is immediately clear, while the speaker’s description of Leda as a “girl” instead of a woman stresses her youth and innocence. The image of the swan (Zeus) “beating” his wings “Above” Leda also establishes the hierarchy between them, in which the swan’s dominant posture reinforces his stature as the animal form of a god who overpowers mortals at will. Leda’s helplessness continues in the following two lines, with “her nape caught in his bill” (Line 3, italics added), with the word “caught” suggesting the god’s predation. The stanza concludes with the speaker describing the swan “hold[ing] her helpless upon his breast” (Line 4); there is no possibility of escape for Leda.

In the second stanza, the speaker poses two related rhetorical questions. The first rhetorical question is, “How can those terrified vague fingers push / The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?” (Lines 5-6), which contrasts the difference between Leda’s and Zeus’s experiences during the encounter. Leda is frightened and unwilling, with her “terrified vague fingers” unsuccessfully attempting to “push” the swan away from her. Zeus, on the other hand, is powerful and in control even as a swan, for his changed form is a “feathered glory” that still speaks of his divinity and immortality. The imagery of Leda’s “loosening thighs” also strikes an incongruous note of sensuality amidst the violence, suggesting that Zeus is enjoying himself. The second rhetorical question is, “And how can body, laid in that white rush / But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?” (Lines 7-8), suggesting that perhaps Leda may sense, through the “strange heart beating” in the swan’s breast, that she has been seized by something (or someone) that is not a mere animal at all.

The poem’s third and final stanza shifts to foreshadowing the consequences of Zeus’s rape of Leda: “A shudder in the loins engenders there / The broken wall, the burning roof and tower / And Agamemnon dead” (Lines 9-11). The mention of “engender[ing]” alludes to Leda’s conceiving of her daughter Helen through this rape, while “The broken wall, the burning roof and tower / And Agamemnon dead” tells of the Trojan War that will eventually break out in a dispute over Helen, who will become known as Helen of Troy. The poem’s closing lines form a final rhetorical question, in which the speaker speculates whether Leda, during her encounter with Zeus, could have foreseen for herself what the terrible future consequences of her own violation would be.