The Elusive Pimpernel

• Dean Dalziel, Grade 8
• Poetry
• 2016

A seething, surging, murmuring, only human by name,
Flow along a paved Parisian street to a crazed man grasping a flame.
High above, on a timber stage, a ‘cursed aristo’ stands
And gazes defiantly around with a pimpernel in her hands-
A Baroness of noble birth, clad in royal red and cream,
She waits for Sergeant Bibot’s cry “À La Madame Guillotine!”
But a wasted beggar shuffles close to murmur in her ear,
While stealthily he looks around, for Bibot must not hear:
“Crush that scarlet flower you hold then vanish in a breath-
For those that hold that flower, there’s only certain death”.
The Baroness tore up her flower, and disappeared once more;
She fled to where La France’s coast is nearest England’s shore.
The whole of Paris on that hour was plunged in deepest gloom,
The city and its mortality tragic to the moon.
The Baroness is seen no more- be she in Heaven or Hell,
For evermore her name will be “The Elusive Pimpernel”.