Skip to main content

Interpretation: "Leda" by H.D.

Where the slow river
meets the tide,
a red swan lifts red wings
and darker beak,
and underneath the purple down
of his soft breast
uncurls his coral feet.

Creature of the sea, made from the deep,
Not its darkness where the hundred monsters
Sleep but from a deeper still, where pearls
And other jewels their corazón await,
A depth so clear, so still,
Deeper than the deep, about its treasures
Clinging like a sheet, edge upon the edge
Of what is seen, a flicker and a sweep.
This way to emerge! Royally too evident become
And darker darkness radiate, to sweep and fly,
Ever in the way things underneath
Have shown themselves
And wear the world as a wreath,
Oblivious to any demand, "Why?"

Through the deep purple
of the dying heat
of sun and mist,
the level ray of sun-beam
has caressed
the lily with dark breast,
and flecked with richer gold
its golden crest.

Gold on gold more gilded, on the other hand, recedes
Into a darkness and stillness, leads
The mind now that the eye is blind
To hide among things more obscure,
Every glimmer in itself so iterated that
What sparkles led to memories of sparkle
Fizzle into mere ideas, projected
Onward into every opposite until
All things are dark,
And darkness darker than the dark.

Where the slow lifting
of the tide,
floats into the river
and slowly drifts
among the reeds,
and lifts the yellow flags,
he floats
where tide and river meet.

Ah kingly kiss—
no more regret
nor old deep memories
to mar the bliss;
where the low sedge is thick,
the gold day-lily
outspreads and rests
beneath soft fluttering
of red swan wings
and the warm quivering
of the red swan’s breast.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sample Essay On Shakespeare's Fifth Sonnet (For My Students)

The theme of Shakespeare’s 5 th Sonnet is saving time. In the poem, Shakespeare talks about how time makes beautiful things ugly. He compares growing old to the way that summer changes into winter. Though in the summer there are many beautiful flowers, in the winter all of these beautiful flowers are gone and there is “bareness every where” (8). The winter is so empty that we could almost forget there had ever been flowers at all – if we didn’t “distil” (13) the beauty of summer to make perfume. What Shakespeare means is that we need to find a way to remember being young (the summer) so that when we are older (in winter) we will still be able to remember being happy. We could do this by having children, who will look like us and make us remember who we were when we were young. I just explained the theme of Shakespeare’s poem and summarized the poem. Now I will talk about how he communicates his theme. First, Shakespeare uses metonymy to help us understand how beautiful we ar...

Genre -- In General

I've spent a bit of time recently watching YouTube videos related to the question of what makes something an RPG.  Since studying literary theory in college, I've become skeptical that you can give clean-cut definitions of the various genres.  I think two works belong to the same genre if they are similar enough across various dimensions.  The problem with similarity is that it's vague.  Everything is similar to everything else in some way, just on a general metaphysical level, and once you get to the products of human culture, each of them is much more like each of the others than it is different.  So arguments about genre tend to fixate on arbitrarily selected differences the importance of which are then magnified to the level of dogma. I believe there is no one difference that will always make X a member of genre G rather than genre G'.  The products of culture are descriptively rich, and there are any number of relevant features that make our experien...

An Empty Gesture

He finds that with propriety he cannot write about his own life.  He acts against people, but he would not make those people conscious witnesses of his actions.  He seals himself away from others, both by the barriers he places in their way and by the silence he erects to guard those barriers.  It is the assault of an animal -- the very thought is contained in the action, and the thought is nothing besides, or at least has no other expression than, that action. To the departed: it was a matter of drifting, it was a matter of harm.  The harm became a wound, the wound scarred, the scar is a rift.  I think of it like a gap that fills up with all the hostilities of the world.  It is something radical and diseased, and I want no part of it.  I also would like to be someone else.  There is now what is for me an insurmountable investment of pain required to cross it, so I would rather call it a loss.  But I feel the pain enough to remark it. ...