University of Virginia Library

FAME.

To gain a name, and be the thing the world
Mimics and mocks, delights in and deludes,
Dooms to despair, and destines for the fane
Of fame; to feel the butterflies of earth
Sucking the essence of almighty thought
To sate and gorge themselves withal;—to be
The vassal camel of a mental waste
Toiling for things detestable, who love
To goad with gilded lances creatures formed
To elevate their honor, and to hear
Groans wrung from bleeding hearts:—to toil and sigh
'Mid vigils of strained thought, and feel the breath
Of waking nature stealing o'er the fires
Of the hot brain, and hear the morning air
Chant matin minstrelsy to hopeless woe,
Mocking the spirit's ear; to look abroad
O'er earth and heaven, and weave in sunny web
Thoughts pure and delicate, conceptions high,
Creations glorious, and fancies rich,
Threads spun in paradise and knit and linked
By magic skill of mighty intellect;—
To think, toil, fancy thus, and yet to know
That we but frame an Eden for base worms,
Serpents of venom, reptiles foul, and things
Beneath all name—'tis vile, oh, very vile!
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And then the cold neglect, the stinging scorn,
The maddening look of pity, and the sneer
That calls itself a smile; the taunting speech
That words its malice in fair compliment
To aggravate its bitterness; the eye
Whose earth-bent gaze doth seem to scorn and laugh
At what the curl'd lip utters; the oblique leer
Of galling envy, telling standers-by
That its approval is the baited barb
Which all confiding genius swallows down,
To its own ruin! These are only part
Of what the votary of living fame
E'er silently endures!—His ocean-thought
Commingles with the universe, and rolls
In tides sublime along the eternal shore,
Its billows swelling amid worlds of light
And sounding immortality! Around
Floats music most seraphic, and above
Ascend the jewelled battlements of heaven,
Warded by spirits of the sun—below—
Alas! the cold re-acting waves return
Mournfully to earth, and lose their rich
Music and brightness in the oozy marsh
And slimy pools of folly, vice and sin.