There’s no odour howso well painted, <br />More peculiar than goodness tainted, <br />As there is no fragrance from whereso came <br />Far fainter than a shallow facile fame; <br />But man has chased the lady for long still— <br />Is not a few days of fame enough thrill? <br />A flower knows better than man well nigh— <br />That all fragrance with her would one day die. <br /> <br />If fame the sole spur be to take man’s spirit far— <br />To touch the realm of infinity aligned <br />With a bemused befuddled mind, <br />Proof it is, people nigh gullible1 are; <br />And if they be damned on the wings of fame— <br />Cromwell2 a red proof would provide, <br />And bless’d be a poetic pen beside2— <br />To warn: the lady too hard is to tame. <br /> <br />Long as passion for fame mountains may move, <br />We all would chase whatso the wise may say, <br />A few minutes of fame— if there’s some way, <br />In hope would man marry the lady love; <br />And lust for fame the last to die, <br />The last man alive would still chase the dame, <br />Such be the lure of killer lady fame, <br />Wise old men too would wed this widow nigh. <br />______________________________________________________________ <br />1. ‘Fame is proof that people are gullible.’ - Ralph Waldo Emerson. <br />2. ‘See Cromwell damn’d to ever-lasting fame.’ – Alexander Pope: Essay <br /> on Man,1281. <br /> <br />The poem ends with, ’Wise old men too would wed this widow nigh.’ <br />Wise or not, I too thought I would write poems for their love alone. And <br />yet, over the period I too succumbed, if not to fame, to feedback from <br />people at large, and decided to send some of them to poemhunter.com. <br />______________________________________________________________________ <br /> - Tongue-in-cheek | 02.08.11 |<br /><br />Aniruddha Pathak<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-lure-of-lady-fame/
