Leda and the swan

Cultural  

1. The subject of a story from classical mythology about the rape of Leda, a queen of Sparta, by Zeus, who had taken the form of a swan. Helen of Troy was conceived in the rape of Leda.

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W. B. Yeats wrote a famous poem entitled “Leda and the Swan.”

Example Sentences

Leonardo could bring a steely exactitude and transparent freshness of observation to a botanical drawing, like the star-of-Bethlehem plant that he drew as a study for his lost painting of Leda and the swan.

From Time Magazine Archive