"Passion and Conquest": Yeats' Swans - Rajdhani College

"Passion and Conquest": Yeats' SwansAuthor(s): Rachel V. BilligheimerSource: College Literature, Vol. 13, No. 1 (1986), pp. 55-70Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25111686Accessed: 27-08-2018 15:46 UTC

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"PASSION AND CONQUESTS YEATS' SWANS

by Rachel V. Billigheimer

Il eats' volume of poems entitled The Wild Swans at Coole is of special sig nificance because it transports us from the Romantic world based on Celtic mythology of the earlier poems, and the subsequent view of the political cli mate in Ireland in Yeats' time, to a more complex, philosophical and Ro mantic vision of life structured on the poet's own mythological concepts. From their role as immortal lovers in the dream-like magical world of Irish mythology, swans evolve into a more dramatic and complex mythological symbolism in The Wild Swans at Coole, both on a personal level and in a universal dimension. Central images for the major themes of this volume, swans are for the most part associated with sorrow and yearning. Thus, as G. B. Saul expresses it, ". . . the twilight murmur of wings in the early verse develops into a 'bell-beat' of tragic eloquence." '

The following lines from "Easter 1916," written at the time of Yeats' dis illusionment with his national and cultural hopes after the tragedy of the Easter Uprising, reveal the poet's awareness of the inevitable changes in the pattern of life:

The horse that comes from the road, The rider, the birds that range From cloud to tumbling cloud, Minute by minute they change. (204)2

It is on this note of meditation that Yeats begins his series of poems in The Wild Swans at Coole. After the tragic events of the Uprising, still unmarried at the age of fifty-one, having been rejected in love and having lost several esteemed friends, Yeats was conscious of the changes wrought by the flux of life on all persons and things including himself. The first poem in The Wild

55


56 COLLEGE LITERATURE

Swans at Coole introduces the poet's meditations on the inevitable changes involved in the progress through youth and age, love and death, which are embodied in his depiction of the swans. These themes permeate the rest of the poems in this series in which Major Gregory and Maud Gonne are eulo gized for their heroic idealism and majestic bearing through the swans which symbolize perfection.

In the first poem of the volume, "The Wild Swans at Coole," the poet re calls the occasion nineteen years previously when he was in the same place at Coole Park watching the swans, and he interprets the fact that he no longer feels the former intense passion for Maud Gonne as a sign of his aging. The swans, which in contrast have remained unchanged, are thus a symbol of eternal life, of permanent beauty and immutability. G. Martin suggests that the annual count of past autumns exerts a magical influence that keeps the poet in contact with his past youth.3 Thus in contrast to the "horse," the "rider" and the "birds" (in the lines quoted above from "Easter 1916"), all of which are inevitably subjected to the processes of change and death in the course of life, the swans represent changelessness, immutability, and im

mortality unattainable by mortals in a world governed by time. The symbolic significance of the number "fifty-nine" with reference to

the swans in the poem has been linked with the occurrence of the "fifty sil ver bells and nine" in the folk ballad "Thomas Rymer," in which Thomas meets the queen of Elfland and is escorted by her to her domain, riding a horse with fifty-nine silver bells hanging from its mane.4 This story may be seen to parallel Yeats' experience of being led by Lady Gregory to her enchanting estate at Coole Park, where he was able to enjoy recreation and cultural pursuits in a serene atmosphere. Yeats, in his attraction to faery lore, had also used an Irish analogue of the theme of "Thomas Rymer" in "The Wanderings of Oisin" (in which Oisin lives three hundred years with his faery bride Niamh). This parallel lends further evidence to the view that the symbolic connotation of "fifty-nine" in the poem is derived from this fable and that it expresses a feeling of gratitude for Lady Gregory's generos ity to him. The image of the fifty-nine swans thus derived from faery lore, set against the recurrent nineteen autumns, contrasts a world unaltered by time with the natural world of aging which is indicated by the nineteenth "autumn" of the poet's life. The swans are then representative of life in the natural world as well as of the life of the imagination in the Romantic world.

The contrasting forces of "passion or conquest", symbolized by the swan, exemplify Yeats' theory of the tension between two contrary forces as


PASSION AND CONQUEST 57

being necessary to progress in life. It is the tension between the two oppos ing forces that produces a forward movement. The swans' flight in "great broken rings" suggests the movement of the "perning of the gyre",5 the up ward intertwining movement which symbolizes on the one hand the fusion of the contrary forces within the individual and on the other hand the spiral movement of the two historical cones representing the contrary forces with in and between civilizations. All the contrary forces represented by the gyre, including the contraries of life and death, are accordingly symbolized in the swan. Among these antithetical concepts are body and soul, mortality and immortality, youth and old age, action and contemplation, movement and stillness, kinesis and stasis, life and art, the philosophies of Heraclitus and Parmenides and becoming and being. Embodying the antitheses of life and art the swans symbolise inspiration, illumination and the artist's vision of the revelation of life which the poet discusses in "Ego Dominus Tuus".

The swans in the poem paddling "lover by lover" and drifting, "myste rious, beautiful", symbolise eternal love, beauty and youth in an enchanted world. This vision lends emphasis to the note of sad contrast in the final lines:

. . . when I awake some day To find they have flown away. (148)

Here the poet is expressing regret at his increasing age, but his "awakening" paradoxically refers to his own death, since it is he who has departed from the world of the imperishable swans. The enchanted atmosphere of the faery world of the swans intensifies the poet's feelings of joy in recalling youth and love as well as of sadness in contemplating aging and dying.6 He feels he has now surmounted the time in life when the heart's passions were both painful and overwhelming to him, and he nostalgically regrets his lost youth. As Balachandra Rajan states, "The bell beat of the swans' wings, that once brought exultation, now rings in the knowledge that a phase of life is ending."7 The whole poem, therefore, which is centered on the swans, centers on the themes of love and death and youth and age which are devel oped further in the later poems of the volume.

In contrast to the poet who stands on the woodland soil, the swans, being creatures of water, symbolize the state of perfect harmony:

. . . they drift on the still water, Mysterious, beautiful. (148)

The stillness of the water is attributed to the timelessness of the swans' world. As water birds, symbolizing perfect harmony and unity with the



world, they are freed from the passions of the mortal world. The symbolic meaning of the swans transcends the significance of the swans in "The Withering of the Boughs," where they represent a public mythical and cul tural emblem of immortality. In "The Wild Swans at Coole" the swans embody the dual concepts of life in the natural world and of timeless exist ence in the immortal realms. At the same time they possess a rich personal meaning for the poet, appearing to him in a private moment of sorrowful contemplation and, by their supreme grace, beauty and brilliance, convey ing to him both a message of reproof for his continued grieving, and a promise of consolation and hope.8

The contrary forces of life are focussed on the poet's own experience. T. Parkinson explains the personal significance of the swans to the poet:

. . . even the apparently objective permanence of the swans' passion and con quest can be explained by assigning its source to the bruised mind of the pro tagonist, who looks on the swans as the antithesis of his lapsed condition. His motives intervene to endow dramatically the swans with qualities that they may not objectively have: their achievements are his failures, and there is no suggestion that his failures are anything other than wasted passion clarified and measured by the simple attainments of natural creatures moving without thought in a natural landscape.9

From this viewpoint the poet's human passions are resolved by the antithet ical influence of the swans. Freed from the burden of wearisome thoughts and unresolved conflicts, the swans represent a perfectly harmonious mani festation of the human mind. However, mirroring the human, they must also be subjective creatures in the mortal world. We are reminded here of Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" in which the poet's deep meditation on the beauty of the bird and its song crystallized this image as representing an experience transcending human limits. Contemplating this exquisite beauty, the poet is transported to a Romantic world from which he can view life with a deeper perspective. The nightingale in the natural world becomes a symbol of inspiration and illumination in a visionary world:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep? ' ?

Both poets express the idea of the cultivation of the imagination as a means of triumphing above the cares of the mundane world. Yeats' concluding lines are reminiscent of Keats. The disappearance of the swans, as that of the nightingale, emphasizes their ultimate abode in a Romantic world, and suggests symbolically the desired goal of the artist projecting himself through the imagination to transcend the turmoil of human "passion." On



departing this life the poet must take leave of his anti- or higher-self which is manifested in the swans, but the immortal values of art and truth which they represent live on in the world of men:

By what lake's edge or pool [will they] Delight men's eyes when I awake some day To find they have flown away? (148)

In this sense, leaving the mortal world, he will be reborn into the realm of eternal beauty of the immortal swans.

Commenting on the imagery of the gyral movement of the "great broken rings,"11 J. Unterecker points out that the spiral movement of the swans, connecting water to sky, symbolizes their ability to live in realms beyond the natural world, in contrast to the limitations of man who, in his mortal life, cannot transcend the earth.12 This supernatural attribute of the swan sig nifying its immortality, together with the symbolism of the "perning of the gyre" implied by the "great broken rings", lays the foundation for the historical mythology associated with the swan (as seen in the context of the poet's historical vision in several poems, notably in "Leda and the Swan").

In "Broken Dreams," through the "mysterious" lake of rejuvenation and immortality, Maud is linked t? the immortal swans. The poet's vision of a resurrected Maud dipping,

In that mysterious, always brimming lake Where those that have obeyed the holy law Paddle and are perfect. . . .(173)

is reminiscent of the portrayal of the swans in "The Wild Swans at Coole": But now they drift on the still water, Mysterious, beautiful. (148)

The archetypal swan, embodying Zeus, the progenitor of Helen of Troy, symbolizes the genesis of Greek civilization. In this manner Maud, through swan symbolism, is associated with immortal worth as well as superhuman beauty. The poet reserves a central place for the values he associates with Maud Gonne. Through the archetypal swan, embodying Zeus, the pro genitor of Helen of Troy, the poet associates his love, Maud Gonne, with Helen as the epitome of beauty, pride and frenzied passion. Born from Leda in

. . . her unblemished lineaments, a whiteness with no stain, That she might be that sprightly girl trodden by a bird . . . . (170)

Helen, and thus Maud, are endowed with superhuman perfection. Yeats portrays the advent of the Greek civilization as governed by predestination:



... the holy bird, that there Accomplished his predestined will, From the limbs of Leda sank But not from her protecting care. (301)

In the volume The Tower, the swan achieves its fullest historical, mythi cal and emotional significance. In "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" the swans become more complex with their additional reference to the soul:

Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan; I am satisfied with that. (234) '3

The idea of the swan symbolizing the soul is derived from Plato, as Parkin son notes.14 We have the words of Socrates:

Will you not allow that I have as much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans? . . . because they are sacred to Apollo, they have a gift of prophecy, and anticipate the good things of another world; wherefore they sing and rejoice on that day [of their death] more than ever they did before. '5

In "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen," in contrast to "The Wild Swans at Coole," where the poet laments his physical death, Yeats bemoans the inevitable end of his activity in the cultural development of a civilization. The swan does not bring him delight or solace:

The swan has leapt into the desolate heaven: That image can bring wildness, bring a rage To end all things, to end What my laborious life imagined, even The half-imagined, the half-written page. (235)

The poet laments that the cycle of life and death is impervious to human, intellectual, and spiritual striving. The swan here symbolizes not only the defeat of humanity in a chaotic world but also its despairing resignation and consequent escape to what might be an illusory world of dreams, the "deso late heaven." The swan symbol of Plato alludes to the tragic process of his tory with man's defencelessness and inevitable overthrow through the tragedy of life or the inexorable onward flow of time. Plato's swan is thus a symbol of wide intellectual and emotional impact. A Platonic context for the swan is implied also in "The Tower." In his

note to this poem Yeats says: When I wrote the lines about Plato and Plotinus I forgot that it is some

thing in our own eyes that makes us see them as all transcendence. Has not Plotinus written: "Let every soul recall then at the outset the truth that soul is the author of all living things . . ."? (533)



After a life filled with cultural and political endeavour, the poet meditates on his inevitable death. At the meeting point of life and death the swan tran scends mortal limits. In "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen," the swan at one level symbolizes human desolation. In "The Tower," however, the swan symbolizes the triumph of a life which rises above achievement and success and the tragic and ephemeral concerns of the mortal world, in a devotion to high and timeless ideals, and thus becomes reconciled to a tran scendent realm:

They shall inherit my pride, The pride of people that were Bound neither to Cause nor to State Neither to slaves that were spat on, Nor to the tyrants that spat . . . Pride like that of the morn, When the headlong light is loose, Or that of the fabulous horn, Or that of the sudden shower When all streams are dry Or that of the hour When the swan must fix his eye Upon a fading gleam, Float out upon a long Last reach of glittering stream And there sing his last song. (222-23)

In "The Tower" the symbolism of the swan has relevance to the world of nature as well as to the world beyond time, a concept of the swan that we see represented in "The Wild Swans at Coole." As in "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" the swan also carries the Platonic reference to the "solitary soul" but here with a connotation of exaltation, instead of desolation, as the poet anticipates his departure to immortality:

I leave both faith and pride To young upstanding men Climbing the mountain-side . . . ... a bird's sleepy cry

Among the deepening shades. (224-25)

"Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931" presents the Platonic swan again with different facets. The scenery and mood are that of "The Wild Swans at Coole," with the poet in the woodlands of Coole contemplating old age and death. However, the poet this time is inspired by a solitary swan, like that



discussed in "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" and "The Tower." On this occasion, however, it is viewed by an old man, as he contemplates his ap proaching death. Here again he thinks of the additional significance of his death and the end of all his endeavours occurring in a culturally declining civilization:

We were the last romantics?chose for theme Traditional sanctity and loveliness . . . But all is changed, that high horse riderless, Though mounted in that saddle Homer rode Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood. (276)

The age of Romantic Ireland is dying away. Artistic inspiration, symbolized by Pegasus the winged "high horse" exploring the flights of the imagina tion, is roughly curbed. The cultivation of the imagination, the spirit or the soul of man, also symbolized by the swan, is cut adrift amidst the "darken ing flood," the era of modern, urbanized Ireland.

"Coole Park and Ballylee," originally named "Swan and Water,"16 is imbued with a passionate striving for aristocratic ideals such as the poet could foster in the cultivated home of Lady Gregory in Coole Park:

Beloved books that famous hands have bound, Old marble heads, old pictures everywhere; Great rooms where travelled men and children found . . . . . . ancestral trees

Or gardens rich in memory glorified. (276)

From Lady Gregory's house and its surroundings the poet derived not only memorable, delightful moments but also artistic inspiration. The swan at Coole Park is an image of perfection:

And is so lovely that it sets to right What knowledge or its lack had set awry So arrogantly pure, a child might think It can be murdered with a spot of ink. (276)

The swan of inspiration floats along the waters of the lake, At sudden thunder of the mounting swan I turned about and looked where branches break The glittering reaches of the flooded lake. (275)

In a letter to Mrs. Yeats, February 3, 1932, Yeats writes: I am turning the introductory verses to Lady Gregory's "Coole" into a poem of some length?various sections with more or less symbolic matter. Yes terday I wrote an account of the sudden ascent of a swan?a symbol of inspiration I think.17



Thomas Parkinson points out that, although the swan may have originated as a symbol of inspiration, evidence from Yeats' unpublished manuscript shows that he later thought of it as a metaphor for the soul; "an image of the soul, creation and light" and then as an image in the world of nature, "A something sudden strange and stormy white."18 The swan is conceived as a symbol of beauty in the natural world, and an icon of art in the world of imagination. From the line "What's water but the generated soul?" (275) we see Yeats' alleged derivation from Porphyry:

Did not the wise Porphyry think that all souls come to be born because of water, and that "even the generation of images in the mind is from water."19

The "stormy white" swan in the natural world of Coole becomes linked with the swan of Platonic symbolism, the yearning, striving "solitary soul" in the "darkening flood," as its death approaches. We now see the signifi cance of the original title "Swan and Water." It is fitting that Yeats' final extensive description of the swan depicts the duality of the symbol in its climactic moment of the meeting of the natural world and the supernatural, the highpoint of life and death:

Another emblem there! That stormy white But seems a concentration of the sky; And, like the soul, it sails into the sight And in the morning's gone, no man knows why. (275)

As Melchiori suggests,20 Yeats probably modelled these lines on Spen ser's conception of the immortal life of the swan in the form of a heavenly emblem:

Upon that famous Rivers further shore, There stood a snowie Swan of heauenly hiew, And gentle kinde, as ever Fowle afore; A fairer one in all the goodlie criew Of white Strimonian brood might no man view: There he most sweetly sung the prophecie Of his owne death in doleful Elegie. At last, when all his mourning m?lodie He ended had that both the shores resounded, Feeling the fit that him forewarnd to die, With loftie flight aboue the earth he bounded And out of sight to highest heauen mounted: Where now he is become an heauenly sign; There now the ioy is his, here sorrow mine.2 '



Yeats also professes to have been substantially influenced by Shelley's sys tem of mythical symbols. As Melchiori remarks,22 we see here another precedent for Yeats' image of the solitary swan:

... A swan was there, Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. It rose as he approached, and with strong wings Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course High over the immeasurable main.23

Spenser's version of the swan, "to highest heauen mounted" and "become an heauenly signe," and Shelley's "Scaling the upward sky" and "High over the immeasurable main," both of which conceive the flight of the swan as one into higher unknown realms, designate the swan as the symbol of life's mysteries. Because of the widespread occurrences of the swan in uni versal mythology, and in particular in Irish legend as well as in English ro mance, and because of its associations of mystery and the occult which ap pealed deeply to Yeats, it is not surprising that he finally created one of his most significant poems, "Leda and the Swan," around the archetype of the swan, making it one of his most profound images for the concepts of his poetic vision.

Yeats' fascination with swans is evident from his earliest poems. As noted by Melchiori, in the Preface written by Yeats to Oliver St. John Gogarty's volume of poems An Offering of Swans, Yeats relates how his friend Go garty, after having narrowly escaped death at the hands of the Irish Re publicans, asked him about the possibility of obtaining two swans.24 At his most critical moment of distress Gogarty pledged himself, should he manage to reach safety, to make an offering of a brace of swans to the River Liffey which was his means of escape. Gogarty collected the swans for the river and named his volume of poems after this adventure. This collection of poems was edited by Yeats in 1923 after which he wrote "The Tower", "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen", "Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931" and "Leda and the Swan" in which the symbol of the swan was deepened by the introduction of multiple levels of meaning. We may furthermore trace the images and concepts in Yeats' "Leda and

the Swan" in part to one of Gogarty's poems in An Offering of Swans: To The Liffey With The Swans

Keep you these calm and lovely things, And float them on your clearest water; For one would not disgrace a King's Transformed beloved and buoyant daughter.



And with her goes this sprightly swan, A bird of more than royal feather With alban beauty clothed upon: O keep them fair and well together! As fair as was that doubled Bird By love of Leda so besotten, That she was all with wonder stirred:

And the Twin Sportsmen were begotten.25

The opening lines refer to the legend of an Irish king, whose twin daughters and twin sons had been transformed into swans by a jealous stepmother. An analogy is drawn to the legend of Leda, whose union with Zeus in the form of a swan gave rise to the fateful birth of two pairs of twins. The poem thus provides a background for the association of an ominous portent with the union of woman and swan.26 As Melchiori later points out,27 Yeats proba bly derived inspiration for his sonnet "Leda and the Swan" from Spenser's Faerie Queene, some sections of which he reproduced in a version of his own:

Then was he turnd into a snowy Swan, To win fair Leda to his louely trade: O wondrous skill, and sweet wit of the man, That her in daffadillies sleeping made, From scorching heat her daintie limbes to shade: Whiles the proud Bird ruffing his fethers wyde, And brushing his faire brest, did her inuade; She slept, yet twixt her eyelids closely spyde, How towards her he rusht, and smiled at his pryde.28

We can also trace facets of the final swan symbol to their source in the poem "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen", which we note was originally en titled "Thoughts upon the Present State of the World."29 Consequently the symbol of the swan has also a universal historical dimension. The moment of the swan's frenzied passion in "Leda and the Swan", which ultimately brings about the destruction and extinction of the Greek civilization, is an ticipated in "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" by the lines:

That image can bring wildness, bring a rage To end all things . . .(235)

This provides an interpretation of the wild and brutal act of rape in "Leda and the Swan" as being symbolical of the initiation of a chaotic and destructive civilization, which consumes itself with the flames of uncontrol lable passions. Hence the line "The broken wall, the burning roof and



tower" (241) bears historical significance through the imagery of martial violence. Since the extinction of the old and the initiation of the new cycles require the interpenetrating action of antithetical forces, we can compre hend in these terms the whole concept of this violent annunciation explained by Yeats in A Vision:

I imagine the annunciation that founded Greece as made to Leda . . . from one of her eggs came Love and from the other War. But all things are from antithesis, and when in my ignorance I try to imagine what older civilization she refuted I can but see bird and woman blotting out some corner of the Babylonian mathematical starlight.30

Through the antithetical movement of the gyres the annunciation of "Leda and the Swan" extinguishes the previous cycle while it ushers in the cycle of Greek civilization. In the poet's depiction of the continuous cyclic pattern of history the swan is considered on a universal mythological plane, in a metaphoric representation of the union of contraries, Love and War, which forms the common basis of all cultures. Accordingly we see in "Leda and the Swan" also Yeats' concept of the double vision of Michael Robartes, which presents a juxtaposition of the world of harmony and the world of chaos. The phases of the moon are also forecast in this metaphoric annun ciation. Concerning the genesis of the poem, Yeats relates:

I wrote Leda and the Swan because the editor of a political review asked me for a poem .... I thought "Nothing is now possible but some movement, or birth from above, preceded by some violent annunciation." My fancy began to play with Leda and the Swan for metaphor, and I began this poem, but as I wrote, bird and lady took such possession of the scene that all politics went out of it.31

Since Yeats was thoroughly versed in the occult theories associated with the Tarot Pack, it is useful to examine its symbolic interpretation of Leda:

Zeus the swan represents divine justice which constitutes order. The swan of the constellation and sign of the zodiac represents Zeus who united with Leda to generate Castor and Pollux. The fertilizing bird brings to mind the dove of the Holy Spirit. In Tarot Card 20, Judgment, it is represented by the angel of judgment who impregnates the earth with eternal breath to provoke the hatching of the seeds which it contains.

The swan is reminiscent of Zeus the highest god. He is thus the god of judg ment which is the guarantee of stability, equilibrium, law, order, logic, government, discernment, placidity . . .Justice ... .In Tarot Card 20, the angel of Judgment impregnates the earth with eternal breath to cause the birth of life, analogously to the swan and Leda and the dove of the Holy Spirit and Mary.32



Accordingly, the Greek Annunciation of Leda and the Swan and the Chris tian Annunciation of Mary and the Dove are linked by the iconography of bird and woman, and in both cases the births are of immense consequence to their own civilization. T. R. Henn lists the associations of the swan image as follows: "The swan stands for power, phallic strength, purity, spirit and spirits (as all white birds), fidelity; fire and air (as the dove); the ineffable Godhead."33

We see the apocalyptic function in the poem of "a sudden blow," "the great wings beating still" and Leda's helplessness, "So mastered by the brute blood of the air." Once fate and imminent will are accomplished, "the indifferent beak could let her drop" (241). The rape of "The broken wall, the burning roof and tower" is a prophetic metaphor of the plunder and burning of Troy. The death of Agamemnon, King of the Greeks, was ironically brought about by Clytemnestra, who was born from one of the eggs of Leda. The infusion of terror in the poem, in Leda's realization of the divine knowledge and power active in this event, the meeting of the ulti mate degree of two contrary forces, is a recognition of the over whelming force of the apocalypse. In Autobiographies Yeats writes: "When a man writes any work of genius, or invents some creative action, is it not because some knowledge or power has come into his mind from beyond his mind?"34

The divine swan is also referred to as "the brute blood of the air" (241). As noted by Melchiori,35 the association of the swan with air and blood is derived from the occultic theory of the correspondences between the ele ments and the humors as set out in the occult system of Cornelius Agrippa, from which Yeats and Ellis quote: "The Humors partake of the elements, for yellow choller is instead of fire, blood instead of air, flegme instead of water, and black choller or melancholy instead of earth."36 Furthermore, Yeats' conception of "Leda and the Swan," as illustrating the concept of the meeting of opposing forces, is already made apparent in his comment on Blake's illustration of a woman pictured kneeling by a pond, on her shoulders wings with a swan's neck and head:

... it has rather the appearance of an involuntary vision of the Feminine viewed as a combination of Air and Water, East and West, which do not meet as in the title-page of "Heaven and Hell," but mingle as a Leda-Swan.37

The imagery of "white rush" and "loosening thighs" could be partly modelled on Michelangelo's painting of Leda and the Swan and subsequent derivations. Melchiori links it also with Michelangelo's contemporaneous "Gannymede and the Eagle," which portrays the tremendous force of the



eagle and the powerful beating of its great wings against Gannymede's help lessness. The portrayal of the bird's head and neck, pressed powerfully against the youth's breast, may have inspired Yeats's depiction, "He holds her helpless breast upon his breast."38

In Yeats' "The Mother of God" we see the Christian counterpart to "Leda and the Swan." In the first stanza, the "Wings beating about the room" (CP 281) are reminiscent of the swan's "great wings beating still" (241). Again the divine bird infuses an overpowering sense of terror:

The threefold terror of love; a fallen flare Through the hollow of an ear; Wings beating about the room; The terror of all terrors that I bore

The Heavens in my womb. (281)

T. R. Henn suggests that this stanza could have been inspired by Blake's drawing of the Annunciation in which Gabriel is depicted with great eagle wings.39 The eagle symbolizes the intellectual, the dove the spiritual, and the swan the mythical aspects of art and life, and these birds are used as aesthetic images of the creative principle.

The swan not only signifies passion and conquest in Yeats' poetry but al so embodies the contrary forces represented by the historico-mythical gyres. Finally, the swan, the symbol of eternal and supreme knowledge and power, being the Greek god Zeus in disguise, is the origin from which the lasting values of the Greek civilization are derived. At the end of the Greek cycle, the annunciation by Gabriel of Christianity is fulfilled through the impreg nation by the Dove of the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. Moreover, through the bird-image parallelism, the poem "Leda and the Swan" not only depicts the annunciation of the Greek civilization but also alludes by association prophetically to the apocalyptic birth of the Christian cycle.

NOTES

1 George Saul. "The Winged Image: A Note on Birds in Yeats's poems." Ed. L. Miller. The Dolmen Press Yeats Centenary Papers. Dublin: Dolmen, 1968: 255.

2 W. B. Yeats. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. London: Macmillan, 1969: 204. All references to Yeats' poems are to this edition.

3 Graham Martin. "The Wild Swans at Coole". Ed. D. Donoghue and J. R. Mulryne. An Honoured Guest: New Essays on W. B. Yeats. London: Arnold, 1965: 62.



4 Joseph Vogel. "Yeats' 'Nine-and-Fifty' Swans". English Language Notes. U. of Colo. 5 June 1968: 298.

5 John Unterecker. A Reader's Guide to William Butler Yeats. New York: Noon day, 1964: 132.

6 Vogel. "Yeats' 'Nine-and-Fifty' Swans": 299. 7 Balachandra Rajan. W. B. Yeats: A Critical Introduction. London: Hutchinson, 1965: 107.

8 Thomas Parkinson. W. B. Yeats: The Later Poetry. Berkeley and Los An geles: U of California P, 1964: 127.

9 Ibid. 128-29. 10 John Keats. "Ode to a Nightingale". Ed. H. B. Forman. The Poetical Works

and Other Writings of John Keats. III. Hampstead ed. New York: Scribners, 1939: 151.

11 Yeats. Collected Poems. 147. 12 Unterecker. A Reader's Guide to William Butler Yeats. 132. 13 A. N. Jeffares. A Commentary on the Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats.

London: Macmillan, 1968: 278 suggests these lines are possibly modelled on Shelley's:

My soul is an enchanted boat, Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing.

P. B. Shelley. Prometheus Unbound. II, V, lines 72-74. Ed. R. Ingpen and W. C. Peck. The Complete Works of Shelley. Poems. II. New York and Lon don: Henn, 1965: 225.

14 Parkinson. W. B. Yeats: The Later Poetry. 132. 15 Plato. "Phaedo." Dialogues of Plato. Trans. B. Jowett. New York: Simon &

Schuster, 1969: 111. 16 Parkinson. W. B. Yeats: The Later Poetry. 132-35. 17 J. M. Hone. W. B. Yeats, 1865-1939. London: Macmillan, 1962: 425. 18 Parkinson. W. B. Yeats: The Later Poetry: 143. 19 Yeats. "Earth, Fire and Water." The Celtic Twilight. Mythologies.

London: Macmillan, 1962: 80. 20 Giorgio Melchiori. The Whole Mystery of Art: Pattern into Poetry in the Work

ofW. B. Yeats. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960: 107-08. 21 Edmund Spenser. "The Ruines of Time" lines 589-603. Complaints. Ed. E.

Greenlaw, C. G. Osgood, F. M. Padelford and R. Heffner. The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition. The Minor Poems 1, II. Balti more: The Johns Hopkins P, 1947: 53.

22 Melchiori. The Whole Mystery of Art. 93-95. 23 P. B. Shelley. "Alastor; or the Spirit of Solitude" lines 275-79. Ed. R. Ingpen

and W. C. Peck. The Complete Works of Shelley. Poems. I. New York and London: Benn, 1965: 184.

24 Melchiori. The Whole Mystery of Art. 93-95.



25 Oliver St. John Gogarty. An Offering of Swans. Preface by W. B. Yeats. Dublin: Cuala, 1923.

26 Melchiori. The Whole Mystery of Art. 96-98. 27 Ibid. 112. 28 Edmund Spenser. The Faerie Queene. Ill, xi, 32. Ed. Greenlaw, Osgood and

Padelford. The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition 3. Balti more: The Johns Hopkins P, 1947, 162.

29 See Melchiori. The Whole Mystery of Art. 96-98. 30 Yeats. A Vision. London: Macmillan, 1937: 268. 31 Yeats. The Cat and the Moon and Certain Poems. Dublin: Cuala, 1924: 37. 32 Oswald Wirth. Le Tarot des Imagiers du Moyen Age. Tehon edition, 1965: '53

85. 33 Thomas Henn. The Lonely To wer. London: Methuen, 1965: 256. 34 Yeats. "Hodos Chameliontos." The Trembling of the Veil. Autobiographies.

London: Macmillan, 1961: 272. 35 Melchiori. The Whole Mystery of Art. 144. 36 E. J. Ellis and W. B. Yeats. Ed. The Works of William Blake, Poetic, Sym

bolic, and Critical. London: Quaritch, 1893: 257. 37 Ellis and Yeats. Ed. The Works of William Blake, Poetic, Symbolic, and Criti

cal. 356-57. 38 Melchiori. The Whole Mystery of Art. 155. 39 Henn. The Lonely Tower. 258.


Documents

"Passion and Conquest": Yeats' Swans - Rajdhani College