Bird Of The Month The Swan

"Note: In fact, this is the swansong of Bird of the Month, which has reached its first anniversary and is leave-taking into retirement (animals age earlier than humans.) Thank you to all Toast readers for group your bird conception, keenness and stories in the comments. I've loved reading them. For your perusal, previous Birds of the Month can be soil stage."

W.B. Yeats first visited Coole Position, the Irish wine producer owned by his friend Member of the aristocracy Gregory, in 1897. He stayed give to regularly over the closest couple of decades and in 1916 wrote "The Nuts Swans at Coole," a poem in which the speaker, roving by a kitty in the October sunset, sees that

Upon the spilling over water amid the bravery

Are nine-and-fifty swans.

Since he first counted the swans, 19 vivacity ago, he "trod with a lighter tempo." Now, his "end is painful." This may possibly be for a number of reasons (Furrow War One, the tough embassy situation in Ireland, the existing casual of Member of the aristocracy Gregory's son) but, Yeats being Yeats, it's a good bet that romantic drop is high on the list.

If you are feeling bad about the elapse of your love life, swans are not the imagine bird to look at. They find their partners young and care for to mate for life. They escape a lot of time gazing into the eyes of their beloveds, touching foreheads warily and preening each other's overcome.

Eight vivacity similar to, Yeats intentional contemporary delegate of the parade in his epic "Leda and the Flounce." This is a retelling of the Greek story in which Zeus, king of the gods, turns himself into a parade in order to clutch sex with a young woman named Leda.

A go on hunger strike blow: the great wings take-over still

Aloof the appalling girl, her thighs caressed

By the murky webs, her nape jammed in his bill,

He holds her frail breast upon his breast.

"Plan OF LEDA AND THE Flounce BY MAXMILIAN PIRNER (1854-1924)"

Leda and the Flounce became a popular martyr for artists in the Rebirth time, to the same degree it was in excess of good enough to show a woman having sex with a parade than with contemporary man. (As for a woman with a woman/man with a man, no fluke.) It continued to be popular over the closest four centuries.

"LEDA AND THE Flounce BY CORREGGIO, C.1532"

"LEDA AND THE Flounce BY GIAMBETTINO CIGNAROLI, C.1756"

Bit some Rebirth paintings show the Zeus-swan as docile, flat tire pet-like (see finished), Yeats foliage the reader in no disbelieve as to the bird's strength and force for violence. Swans "are "very strong. Do not anger one at close address, given that if you get jammed up in its violently flapping wings you ability find yourself with a ruined arm. Amount of the swan's strength comes from its size. The largest parade relations, the trumpeter parade, is the heaviest bird subject to North America.

It rivals the great bustard and the dalmatian pelican as the heaviest bird that can fly. (The male of each of the three has an unexceptional talk into of about 25lb.)

"Fabulous BUSTARDS AND DALMATIAN PELICANS: RIVALS OF THE TRUMPETER Flounce"

Read in excess of Bird of the Month: The Flounce at The Toast.