Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: Place de la Bastille, Paris
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of Composition: 1849

The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.

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Place de la Bastille,Paris.

  • How dear the sky has been above this place!
  • Small treasures of this sky that we see here
  • Seen weak through prison-bars from year to year;
  • Eyed with a painful prayer upon God's grace
  • To save, and tears that stayed along the face
  • Lifted at sunset. Yea, how passing dear,
  • Those nights when through the bars a wind left clear
  • The heaven, and moonlight soothed the limpid space!
  • So was it, till one night the secret kept
  • 10Safe in low vault and stealthy corridor
  • Was blown abroad upon swift tongues of flame.
  • O ways of God, mysterious evermore!
  • How many on this spot have cursed and wept
  • That all might stand here now & own Thy Name.
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
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