In William Butler Yeats' poem "Leda and the Swan", he uses the fourteen lines of the traditional sonnet form in a radical, modernist style. It evokes a series of unforgettable and bizarre images of an immediate physical event using abstract descriptions in brief language. Through structure and language, Yeats is able to paint a powerful sexual picture to his readers without directly conveying the meaning of the poem. “Leda and the Swan” is a violent and sexually explicit poem with its simple diction, rhythmic vigor and allusions to the mystical. ideas about the universe, the relationship between the human and the divine, and the cycles of history. It can be seen as a poem about how a single event should be understood as part of a larger project; the result of the god's assault on Leda is the birth of Helen of Troy...