Abstract
Edith Sitwell uses color symbolism throughout her entire canon of work, both in her poetry and in her prose. Her color imagery can range from the traditional red rose, which appears as a powerful symbol of life in her war poetry, to the esoteric "Emily-colored primulas" of Spring, an early poem in the Bucolic Comedies. It was often necessary for Dame Edith to explain her color symbolism because of its individual nature. Her explanation that "Emily is a countrified old fashioned name, and pink primulas remind one of . . . country girls" was essential to an understanding of the meaning of the poem in which that symbol appeared. In the view of Dame Edith, few things could be more clear than her use of color. By the time she writes her great war poetry, however, much refinement of the poetic skill had occurred and the color symbols in those poems are, though multi-level, not of the same hidden quality as the early attempts at color used for increased meaning.