Leda and the Swan Poetic Analysis

William Butler Yeats’ poem “Leda and the Swan” is a hauntingly beautiful recreation of the Greek myth in which Zeus takes the form of a swan in order to seduce Leda, who, as a result of this brutality becomes the mother of Helen of Troy—the woman who is credited with starting the Trojan War. Yeats’ choice of employing the sonnet format (sometimes associated with romantic thoughts) in order to retell this story, along with …

…woman—perhaps even empowered? Again, one has to take into account the myth—this is not a typical act of violence from a man against a woman. Yeats has brought in the idea that the doing in of Troy was begun in this single act—the conception of Helen of Troy—which leads to an interesting commentary on the unfolding of history and whether events as they occur are actually in our control or not!