Bit by bit all that they intended to be eternal slips back into the
common thing around. A blurred image, growing fainter and fainter,
lingers. At last the person vanishes, and in its place some public
raising material things--a monument, a tomb, an ornament, or weapon of
enduring metal--is all that remains.
If it were possible for the spring of appetite and quest to be dried up
in man, such a spectacle would dry up that spring.
It is not possible, for it is providentially in the nature of man to
cherish these illusions of an immortal memory and of a life bestowed
upon the shade or the mere name of his living greatness. Those various
forms of fame which are young men's goals, and to which the eager
creative power of early manhood so properly directs itself, seem each in
turn or each for its varying temperament to promise the desired reward;
and one imagines that his love, another that his discoveries, another
that his victories in the field or his conspicuous acts of courage will
remain permanently with his fellows long after he has left their feast.
As though to give some substance to the flattering cheat, there is one
kind of fame which men have been permitted to attain, and which does
give them a sort of fixed tenure--if not for ever, yet for generations
upon generations--in the human city. This sort of fame is the fame of
the great poets.
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