is,again, representative of the conflict within the poem. Verbs play a major role in understanding "Leda and the Swan." They are presenttense through the octave and the first part of the sestet ("holds," "push," "feel,""engenders"). They then shift to past tense in the last part of the sestet ("caught,""ma stered," "Did") (Hargrove 241). The verbs in the present tense imply an intenseimmediacy while those in the past tense distance the reader (and perhaps the aggressoras well) from what has just occurred. Additionally, as Nancy Hargrove points out, there is a juxtaposition between active and passive verbs so that the active verb forms("holds," "engenders") belong to the swan while passive verb forms ("caressed,""caught," "mastered") belong to Leda (241). The verb forms, then, play an active rolein c ontributing to a close textual reading. Yeats continuously makes use of various devices to further heighten ambiguous,oppositional, and dramatic elements within his poetry. "In his minimal use of thepossessive adjective, and the consequently greater use of somewhat unusual alternativefor ms, Yeats achieves effects which are curiously suspended between the concrete andthe general" (Shaw 37), thus highlighting the ambiguities in the text. Further still,"the linguistic suggestiveness of the absence of any qualifiers for 'body' is considerable" (Shaw 37). It is considerable in that it makes us even more aware of theambiguities (whose body?). It linguistically suggests the lack of an identity; it isessentially a dehumanizing element. While the subject matter of the poem is violent and disturbing, the structure of"Leda" conveys feelings of safety and beauty. Hargrove submits that the intensity ofthe rape is controlled by the narrow confines of the sonnet, an aesthetically pleasingand heavily structured art form (242). Douglas Archibald asserts, "The sonnet formachieves for 'Leda'" this: "violence and historical sweep held in one of the...
