FAME.
So the Lord was with Joshua; and his fame was noised throughout all the country.—Joshua, vi. 27.
And the fame of David went out into all lands; and the Lord brought the fear of him upon all nations.—I. Chronicles, xiv. 17.
And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
And his fame went throughout all Syria.—Matthew, iv. 23, 24.
But Fame, alarmed, o’er Libya’s cities flies:
Fame, the most fleet of mischief’s progenies:
Who gathers speed from every passing hour;
Grows as she moves, and travels into power.
Timid and small at first, at length she shrouds,
While treading on the ground, her forehead in the clouds.
Offended at the gods, great parent Earth,
’Tis said, in vengeance gave the monster birth,
Of all her giant family the last;
A swift-wing’d portent, foul, deform’d, and vast,
Beneath each numerous plume, that lifts her flight,
An active eye extends her scope of sight.
As many ears, and mouths, and tongues she moves,
To catch and spread the rumours as she roves.
Midway ’twixt heaven and earth, through night she flies
Clanging, nor bathes in dewy sleep her eyes.
By day she keeps on watch, and takes her stand
On some high roof or tower of wide command;
And thence, alike for truth or falsehood loud,
She shakes the city and distracts the crowd.
Symmons, from Virgil.
Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
Live register’d upon our brazen tombs,
And then grace us in the disgrace of death;
When, spite of cormorant-devouring time,
The endeavour of his present death may buy
That honour, which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge,
And makes us heirs of all eternity.
Shakspere.
Then straight thro’ all the world ’gan fame to fly;
A monster swifter none is under sun;
Increasing, as in waters we discry
The circles small, of nothing that begun,
Till of the drops, which from the skies do fall,
The circles spread and hide the waters all.
Sackville.
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble minds)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days.
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glittering foil,
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies.
Milton.
For fame the wretch beneath the gallows lies,
Disowning every crime for which he dies,
Of life profuse, tenacious of a name,
Fearless of death, and yet afraid of shame.
Nature has wove into the human mind
This anxious care of names we leave behind.
To extend our narrow views beyond the tomb,
And give an earnest of a life to come;
For, if when dead, we are but dust or clay,
Why think of what posterity shall say?
Her praise or censure cannot us concern,
Nor ever penetrate the silent urn.
Soame Jennins.
All fame is foreign, but of true desert;
Plays round the head, but comes not near the heart;
One self-approving hour whole years outweighs
Of stupid starers, and of loud huzzas;
And more true joy Marcellus exil’d feels,
Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels.
*****
And what is fame? the meanest have their day;
The greatest can but blaze, and pass away.
Pope.
I hate this Fame, false avarice of fancy,
The sickly shade of an unsolid greatness!
The lying lure of pride that Europe cheats by.
Hill.
Absurd! to think to overreach the grave,
And from the wreck of names to rescue ours:
The best concerted schemes men lay for fame,
Die fast away; only themselves die faster.
Blair.
Not inspiration can obtain
That fame, which poets languish for in vain.
How mad their aim, who thirst for glory, strive
To grasp, what no man can possess alive!
Fame’s a reversion in which men take place
(O late reversion!) at their own decease.
Young.
Of all the phantoms fleeting in the mist
Of Time, though meagre all, and ghostly thin,
Most unsubstantial, unessential shade,
Was earthly Fame. She was a voice alone,
And dwelt upon the noisy tongues of men.
She never thought, but gabbled ever on,
Applauding most what least deserved applause.
The motive, the result, was nought to her.
The deed alone, though dyed in human gore,
And steeped in widows’ tears, if it stood out
To prominent display, she talked of much,
And roared around it with a thousand tongues.
As changed the wind her organ, so she changed
Perpetually; and whom she praised to-day,
Vexing his ear with acclamations loud,
To-morrow blamed, and hissed him out of sight.
Pollok.
True fame’s a plant that seems to need
A body buried—for its seed;
And ere the churlish sucklings thrive,
The parent-stock must cease to live.
The good, the great, the wise, the just,
Are little valued till they’re dust,
Nor till they mutter “Earth to earth,”
Can men perceive another’s worth.
C. C. Colton.
What though the mounds that mark’d each name,
Beneath the wings of Time,
Have worn away?—Theirs is the fame
Immortal and sublime;
For who can tread on Freedom’s plain,
Nor wake her dead to life again.
R. Montgomery.