There’s no odour howso well painted,
More peculiar than goodness tainted,
As there is no fragrance from whereso came
Far fainter than a shallow facile fame;
But man has chased the lady for long still—
Is not a few days of fame enough thrill?
A flower knows better than man well nigh—
That all fragrance with her would one day die.

If fame the sole spur be to take man’s spirit far—
To touch the realm of infinity aligned
With a bemused befuddled mind,
Proof it is, people nigh gullible1 are;
And if they be damned on the wings of fame—
Cromwell2 a red proof would provide,
And bless’d be a poetic pen beside2—
To warn: the lady too hard is to tame.

Long as passion for fame mountains may move,
We all would chase whatso the wise may say,
A few minutes of fame— if there’s some way,
In hope would man marry the lady love;
And lust for fame the last to die,
The last man alive would still chase the dame,
Such be the lure of killer lady fame,
Wise old men too would wed this widow nigh.
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1. ‘Fame is proof that people are gullible.’ - Ralph Waldo Emerson.
2. ‘See Cromwell damn’d to ever-lasting fame.’ – Alexander Pope: Essay
on Man,1281.

The poem ends with, ’Wise old men too would wed this widow nigh.’
Wise or not, I too thought I would write poems for their love alone. And
yet, over the period I too succumbed, if not to fame, to feedback from
people at large, and decided to send some of them to poemhunter.com.
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- Tongue-in-cheek | 02.08.11 |

Aniruddha Pathak

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-lure-of-lady-fame/