Majestic art of swanning about

Q&A Jan Jarvis

Most of us have, at some time or another, been captivated by the serene beauty and mesmerising power of a swan, gliding slowly across a lake, leaving only the smallest of ripples in its elegant wake.

In ‘Wild Swans at Coole’, WB Yeats’s sombre, beautiful poem describes how the swans “drift on the still water, mysterious, beautiful”.