Fame's Penny-Trumpet
Fame's Penny-Trumpet
Blow, blow your trumpets till they crack,
Ye little men of little souls!
And bid them huddle at your back Goldsucking
leeches, shoals on shoals!
Fill all the air with hungry wails "
Reward us, ere we think or write!
Without your Gold mere Knowledge fails
To sate the swinish appetite!"
And, where great Plato paced serene,
Or Newton paused with wistful eye,
Rush to the chace with hoofs unclean
And Babelclamour
of the sty
Be yours the pay: be theirs the praise:
We will not rob them of their due,
Nor vex the ghosts of other days
By naming them along with you.
They sought and found undying fame:
They toiled not for reward nor thanks:
Their cheeks are hot with honest shame
For you, the modern mountebanks!
Who preach of Justice plead
with tears
That Love and Mercy should abound While
marking with complacent ears
The moaning of some tortured hound:
Who prate of Wisdom nay,
forbear,
Lest Wisdom turn on you in wrath,
Trampling, with heel that will not spare,
The vermin that beset her path!
Go, throng each other's drawingrooms,
Ye idols of a petty clique:
Strut your brief hour in borrowed plumes,
And make your pennytrumpets
squeak.
Deck your dull talk with pilfered shreds
Of learning from a nobler time,
And oil each other's little heads
With mutual Flattery's golden slime:
And when the topmost height ye gain,
And stand in Glory's ether clear,
And grasp the prize of all your pain So
many hundred pounds a year
Then let Fame's banner be unfurled!
Sing Paeans for a victory won!
Ye tapers, that would light the world,
And cast a shadow on the Sun
Who still shall pour His rays sublime,
One crystal flood, from East to West,
When YE have burned your little time
And feebly flickered into rest!
Blow, blow your trumpets till they crack,
Ye little men of little souls!
And bid them huddle at your back Goldsucking
leeches, shoals on shoals!
Fill all the air with hungry wails "
Reward us, ere we think or write!
Without your Gold mere Knowledge fails
To sate the swinish appetite!"
And, where great Plato paced serene,
Or Newton paused with wistful eye,
Rush to the chace with hoofs unclean
And Babelclamour
of the sty
Be yours the pay: be theirs the praise:
We will not rob them of their due,
Nor vex the ghosts of other days
By naming them along with you.
They sought and found undying fame:
They toiled not for reward nor thanks:
Their cheeks are hot with honest shame
For you, the modern mountebanks!
Who preach of Justice plead
with tears
That Love and Mercy should abound While
marking with complacent ears
The moaning of some tortured hound:
Who prate of Wisdom nay,
forbear,
Lest Wisdom turn on you in wrath,
Trampling, with heel that will not spare,
The vermin that beset her path!
Go, throng each other's drawingrooms,
Ye idols of a petty clique:
Strut your brief hour in borrowed plumes,
And make your pennytrumpets
squeak.
Deck your dull talk with pilfered shreds
Of learning from a nobler time,
And oil each other's little heads
With mutual Flattery's golden slime:
And when the topmost height ye gain,
And stand in Glory's ether clear,
And grasp the prize of all your pain So
many hundred pounds a year
Then let Fame's banner be unfurled!
Sing Paeans for a victory won!
Ye tapers, that would light the world,
And cast a shadow on the Sun
Who still shall pour His rays sublime,
One crystal flood, from East to West,
When YE have burned your little time
And feebly flickered into rest!