This question is based on THE STONE. The stone in the poem is primarily a symbol of:

A stone is among the most enduring objects in nature. It survives long after the people who placed, carved, or touched it have gone. In poetry, a stone frequently stands for something that persists across time, preserving a connection to what came before.

In this poem, the stone functions as a symbol of memory and permanence. Its physical durability mirrors the way certain experiences, relationships, or cultural knowledge remain fixed in the mind and in the landscape despite the passage of years. The stone does not change, decay, or forget; it holds its place and, by extension, holds the past within it.

The other options do not fit the stone's symbolic role here. Emotional detachment is an abstract psychological state that the stone's solidity does not represent. Industrial progress implies change and modernisation, which contradicts the stone's association with endurance and the unchanging. Wealth and prestige are social constructs tied to status, not to the natural permanence a stone embodies.