object:1.wby - Leda And The Swan
author class:William Butler Yeats
book class:Yeats - Poems
subject class:Poetry
subject class:Mysticism
class:chapter
A SUDDEN blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs,
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
The original print of this piece (Dial, June 1924) had these lines
lines 1 - 4
A rush, a sudden wheel, and hovering still
The bird descends, and her frail thighs are pressed.
By the webbed toes, and that all-powerful bill
Has laid her helpless face upon his breast.
lines 6 - 8
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs!
(the question mark was later replaced with an exclamation mark, The Tower 1928) All the stretched body's laid on the white rush
And feels the strange heart beating where it lies;
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