What is broken sword?

Famous quotes containing the words broken and/or sword:

    The broken ridge of the hills
    was the line of a lover’s shoulder,
    his arm-turn, the path to the hills,
    the sudden leap and swift thunder
    of mountain boulders, his laugh.
    Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)

    I had not given a penny for a song
    Did not the poet sing it with such airs
    That one believed he had a sword upstairs;
    Yet would be now, could I but have my wish,
    Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)