An original poem
"Where silent zephyrs sported with the dust/of the Bastille I sate in the open sun,/And from the rubbish gathered up a stone,/And pocketed the relic in the guise/Of an Enthusiast"
from The Prelude IX (1805) lines 67-70
I wonder if that bit of stone
that Wordsworth had from the Bastille
ever got itself rethrown
against repressive steel,
Or was it tossed into a lake,
the poet watching from the bank,
seeing what ripples it would make
and go on making while it sank?
Was it that "sacred relic's" fate
to scatter minnows in a moonlit pond
and for a moment help create
the golden whorls of the Beyond?
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