By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Leda and the Swan’ (published in 1924) is one of W. B. Yeats’s most widely anthologised poems. The poem, which somewhat unusually for Yeats is a sonnet, is about the ravishing of the Greek girl Leda by the god Zeus, who has assumed the form of a swan. Here is ‘Leda and the Swan’ and some notes towards an analysis of this intriguing and enigmatic Yeats poem.