...century BC, known as 'the Critian Boy', photo courtesy of Hirmer Fotoarchiv. Right: Leda and the Swan. 'A sudden blow: the great wings beating still / Above the staggering girl. . .' Below left: Gandhara statue of the standing Buddha. Right: Marble statues from the Mausoleum of...

...would make these selections as a means of promoting awareness and generating consequent discussion: A sudden blow, the great wings beating still Above...thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, the strange heart beating where it lies? A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the...

...else's. (IY, x) What is impressive and strange is the poem's creative representation of sexual power: A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above...breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fmgers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in thai white rush....

...abstract words that are the equivalent of that experience. Consider the following poem: Leda and the Swan A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above...bill. He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. T: How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how...

...scope and sense of the poem. On the contrary, it points forward, as the first stanza clearly shows: A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above...bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. The mood is one of pure expectation; the stanza portends surprise and destiny. Now, this certainly...

...breast to think Beast gave beast as much. (1. 9—12) 523 POETRY QUOTATIONS 524 Leda and the Swan 84 t hear it? — No; 'twas but the wind, Or the car rattling o'er the sto (1. 1—2) 85 A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower (1....

...decreases the clumsiness of the God, increases his violence, and frames that violence as seductive: A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above...in his bill. He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.72 The vagueness of "rush" and "wheel" and the discursiveness of "the bird descends" are condensed...

...Leda, who suffers. In Yeats's 'Leda and the Swan', however, there is a recognition of Leda's dilemma:18 How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? None the less, despite recognising Leda's plight, Yeats celebrates a male victory : Did she put on...

...form on edge through sheer dramatic power of content, beginning with its syntax-violating opening: "A sudden blow: the great wings beating still / above the staggering girl. . . ." No, the community for which Yeats is nostalgic here is precisely the sublime union he imagines...

...wood the seduction of Leda by Zeus as a swan. Yeats's sonnet in A Vision is worked into the fabric: A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above...bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. ("When she laid eyes on Mr. MacLain close, she staggered, he had such grandeur, and then she was caught...