![]() The impregnation in this poem has many layers. Despite its ABAB rhyme scheme, the poem maintains a breathlessness that is partially due to enjambment, a poetic technique that Yeats uses liberally in this collection. That Helen was part goddess helps to explain how her beauty brought about the destruction of two civilizations. Zeus fell in love with a mortal, Leda the Trojan queen, and raped her while taking on the form of a swan to protect his identity. The myth of Leda and the Swan is a familiar one from Classical mythology. This is the most famous poem in the collection, and its most intense and immediate in terms of imagery. The speaker asks her whether she accessed his knowledge as well as his power before he let her drop. ![]() A shudder in his loins impregnates her and foreshadows the burning wall and Agamemnon’s death. ![]() Her fingers cannot push his feather from her thighs. His webbed feet caress her thighs, and he catches her in the nape of his neck. A sudden hit from above, and the swan’s wings beat above the girl. ![]()
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