BL. W. B. Yeats

73. Witt, Marion. ‘Yeats’ A Dialogue of Self and Soul’ (30a). Explicator, 5/7 (1947): no. 48.

Witt notes that Sato’s sword and its embroidered wrapping in the poem under discussion are for Yeats symbols of the ‘vital objective life’ of ‘war and love’; she follows by noting that ‘the sword as symbol for the active life is very common in Yeats’ work’ from the eighties forward, and concludes that in this poem ‘the sword and embroidery are . . . only incidentally Japanese . . . not inherently so’.