mosttightly controlled of poetic forms" (196). The violence of the rape is then controlledwithin the constraints of the sonnet. Additionally, the sonnet itself is brief, thusensuring the rape will be brief as well. While the rape is controlled through the structure of the poem, the organizationof the poem "reflects in an orderly manner the progress of the rape" (Hargrove 243). The first quatrain presents the assault. The second quatrain reflects Leda's emotions. The first half of the sestet presents the ejaculation scene. The cut line represents adramatic moment in time: a death-like silence. The final part of the sestet shows theact receding into memory while posing the question of meaning (Hargrove 243). Yeats makes use of several technical devices to convey the intensity of what isbeing portrayed in the poem. Among these devices are alliteration ("brute blood"),iambic pentameter, and the meter in general. Bernard Levine notes that "no regularmetric al pattern" exists but "there is a pervading rhythmic base in which verbal stressdisplaces the accent-guided line" (116). Nancy Hargrove elaborates by showing that themeter imitates the gasping and throbbing pulsations of the rape by its irregularity, its sudden sharp caesuras, its sentences spilling over from line to line, itsdramatic broken lines in the sestet, its piling of stressed syllables (243). The ambiguities in "Leda" imply a confrontation both real and imagined, physicaland intellectual. Bernard Levine addresses the ambiguity surrounding "the staggeringgirl" in line three. "Staggering" as intransitive participle means that the girl is literally physically staggering, but the transitive verb form shows that she "staggers"the mind (of the swan), so to speak (115). Levine addresses another ambiguity in theconnotation of the word "still" in line one. The bird is described (we assume) a shaving just dropped down on Leda, yet the word "still" implies a timeless continuity...
