Among School Children

The Greek myth of Leda is referenced several times throughout the poem. In Greek mythology, Leda was an Aetolian princess who caught the attention of the God Zeus (not the first nor last to face this particular misfortune). Zeus came to Leda in the form of a swan, and from this union two children were born: Polydeuces, the hero, and Helen, who would go down in history as the beautiful woman who broke Troy. In “Among School Children,” Yeats uses the symbolism of Leda and the Swan to compare the woman of his imaginings—thought to be the woman Maud Gonne—to the beautiful Helen of Troy.

In the second stanza, he says “I dream of a Ledaean body” (Line 9), meaning a body like that of the princess Leda’s, and later, “even daughters of the swan,” (Line 20) referring to the daughter of Zeus in his swan shape. In the fourth stanza, the poet says, “And I though never of Ledaean kind / Had pretty plumage once” (Lines 29-30), suggesting that he could never compare to the beauty of Leda and her daughter Helen, though his bird shape was attractive enough. This repeated mythological motif gives the poem a sense of unity and joins the down-to-earth qualities of the classroom with the godly beauty and wonder of the poet’s daydreams.