Has not our verse extoll’d thy Name—
And with it imp’d the Wings of fame?²
What about you’s small? Not Legend,
Not Stature—real talk: just Lifespan.³
Earthly glory Ageth and Seareth—⁴
Can storied urn or animated bust back
To its mansion call the fleeting Breath?
Can honour’s voice provoke the silent dust or
Flatt’ry sooth the dull cold ear of death?⁵
Glory is like a circle in the water which
Never ceaseth to Enlarge itself—till by
Broad spreading it disperse to Nought.⁶
A wretch, concentrated all in self, living,
Forfeits fair renown—and doubly dying, goes
Down to the vile dust, from whence he sprung—
Unwept, Unhonoured, and Unsung—⁷
The Tide catches us at our pastime—
Writing down our foolish name
Too near upon the Sea …⁸
A crowded hour of glorious Life
Is worth an age without a name!⁹
Fame of Myself, to justify,
All other plaudit be
Superfluous—an incense
Beyond necessity!¹⁰
¹ Edgar Allan Poe, Landor’s Cottage
² Thomas Carew, Ingrateful Beauty Threatened
³ Chinaka Hodge, Small Poems for Big
⁴ The Seafarer tr. Ezra Pound
⁵ Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard
⁶ William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part 1
⁷ Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel
⁸ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh
⁹ Thomas Osbert Mordaunt, The Call
¹⁰ Emily Dickinson, Fame of Myself