Poems About Fame

Table of Contents

1. Fame is a fickle food

   Fame is a fickle food
   

   - Emily Dickinson
   Fame is a fickle food

   “

   by Emily Dickinson

   Fame is a fickle food
   Upon a shifting plate
   Whose table once a
   Guest but not
   The second time is set.
   

   Whose crumbs the crows inspect
   And with ironic caw
   Flap past it to the Farmer’s Corn —
   Men eat of it and die.
   

2. Popularity

   It has become almost an honor
   Not to be crowned.
   

   - Thomas Bailey Aldrich
   Stanzas Written on the Road Between Florence and Pisa

   “

   by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

   Such kings of shreds have wooed and won her,
   Such crafty knaves her laurel owned,
   It has become almost an honor
   Not to be crowned.
   

3. I'm nobody! Who are you?

   by Emily Dickinson

   I'm nobody! Who are you?
   Are you nobody, too?
   Then there 's a pair of us — don't tell!
   They 'd banish us, you know.

   How dreary to be somebody!
   How public, like a frog
   To tell your name the livelong day
   To an admiring bog!

4. excerpt from "The Young Artist"

   by Hannah Flagg Gould

   
   

   ►

   ▼

    Full Text

   Honors may bloom on thy future way;
   And the rays of glory around thee play.
   But fame's best laurels never will be
   So dear as thy sister's wreath to thee!
   For, they will not set on a cloudless brow,
   And a silken curl, as we see them now!
   

   Fame will her envied crown prepare
   For the whitening locks and the brow of care.
   Its clustering leaves will not be lit
   By the smile of a child, who has braided it!
   As thy native castle, sublimely grand,
   A beautiful structure, thou mays't stand
   High and unmoved by the tempest's strife,
   The bolt and the blast of the storms of life.
   But should it be thus, there must come a day
   When thy house will shake, and its strength decay;
   When the light that will gild its crumbling towers
   Must be left by the sun of thy childish hours!
   Then, may their memory, like the vine,
   Mantling over the ruin, twine,
   And, spreading a living vesture, climb
   To cover the rust and the tooth of time,
   And curtain with verdure the mouldering walls,
   Which shall not fade till the fabric falls!
   

5. To Youth

   by George Gordon Byron

   
   

   ►

   ▼

    Full Text

   Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story;
   The days of our youth are the days of our glory;
   And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
   Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.
   

   What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled?
   'Tis but as a dead-flower with May-dew besprinkled:
   Then away with all such from the head that is hoary!
   What care I for the wreaths that can only give glory?
   

   Oh Fame!—if I e'er took delight in thy praises,
   'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases,
   Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover,
   She thought that I was not unworthy to love her.
   

   There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee;
   Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee;
   When it sparkled o'er aught that was bright in my story,
   I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory.
   

6. Success

   by Amos Russel Wells

   
   

   ►

   ▼

    Full Text

   If he succeeds whose coffers, heaped with gold,
   Are red with ruined and despairing lives,
   The man who owns a mint to coin tears,
   Expert to wring a farthing from a heart,—
   Though all the world pay homage, all the world
   Envy the wretch,—if this is to succeed,
   My pride and all my hope shall be to fail!

   If he succeeds who bids the magpie crowd,
   Tossing his name upon its chattering tongues,
   Talk, write, and dream of him, and they obey,
   While he they praise, alive on lips of men,
   Has breathed his soul into the bubble, fame,
   And lives an empty life,—if he succeeds,
   Be mine a life of failure to the end!

   If he succeeds, the man of strenuous brain,
   Skilled in the deeps and heights of many a lore,
   Bent with the plundered wealth of libraries,
   But ignorant of love, and ignorant
   Of all the roses and the stars of life,—
   Though men unite to wonder and applaud,
   If this is called success, be mine defeat!

   But these are not success; success it is
   To front the angry tumult of a world
   With Right for comrade; faithfully to work;
   To wear contentment shining on the brow;
   Above the gathered treasures of the globe
   To reckon brotherhood. and make it mine,—
   This is success, and this my prayer shall be.

7. Where Fame is Sure

   Though all the storms of life may beat,
   Your fame will find a safe retreat,
   A haven sure and undefiled,
   Within the memory of your child.
   

   - Amos R. Wells
   Where Fame is Sure

   “

   by Amos Russel Wells

   
   

   ►

   ▼

    Full Text

   The hollow-sounding trump of fame
   May never magnify your name,
   Nor even in the small renown
   Of any close-encircled town
   May men exult your praises high
   To fill a little, local sky.
   

   But evermore and evermore,
   To Time's remotest, firmest shore,
   Though all the storms of life may beat,
   Your fame will find a safe retreat,
   A haven sure and undefiled,
   Within the memory of your child.
   

   Ah, let it be your constant care
   That this your fame may all be fair,
   That only what is kind and wise
   Your child may thus immortalize,
   And carry through eternity
   The parent you would like to be!
   

8. Fame

   by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

   
   

   ►

   ▼

    Full Text

   Of all the thousand verses you have writ,
   If Time spare none, you will not care at all;
   If Time spare one, you will not know of it:
   Nor shame nor fame can scale a churchyard wall.
   

9. Singer and Song

   by Freeman E. Miller

   
   

   ►

   ▼

    Full Text

   A singer sang in sorrow long
   And breathed his life into his song.
   

   Unknown, unheard, the song went wide,
   Until the singer, starving, died.
   

   Now in their hearts the nations write
   And wear the singer's song of might.
   

   Ah, singers fail and fall from view,
   But songs are always, always new!
   

   If garlands none to singers cling,
   Bays wreathe above the songs they sing.
   

Related Poems