Observations placeholder
Yeats, W B - A Dialogue of Self and Soul - The consecrated blade upon my knees
Identifier
001711
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
My self = soul
Soul = Higher spirit
A description of the experience
W B Yeats – from Selected Poetry
from A Dialogue of Self and Soul
My Self - The consecrated blade upon my knees
Is Sato's ancient blade, still as it was
Still razor keen, still like a looking glass
Unspotted by the centuries;
That flowering silken, old embroidery, torn
From some court-lady's dress and round
The wooden scabbard bound and wound,
Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn
My Soul – Why should the imagination of a man
Long past his prime remember things that are
Emblematical of love and war?
Think of ancestral night that can,
If but imagination scorn the earth
And intellect its wandering
To this and that and t'other thing
Deliver from the crime of death and birth
My Self - Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it
Five hundred years ago, about it lie
Flowers from I know not what embroidery
Heart's purple – and all these I set
For emblems of the day against the tower
Emblematical of the night
And claim by a soldier's right
A charter to commit the crime once more