The Poetical Writings of Fitz-Greene Halleck/The Love of Notoriety

by Fitz-Greene Halleck and Joseph Rodman Drake

THE LOVE OF NOTORIETY.

here are laurels our temples throb warmly to claim,
Unwet by the blood-dripping fingers of War,
And as dear to the heart are the whispers of fame,
As the blasts of her bugle rang fiercely and far;
The death-dirge is sung o’er the warrior’s tomb,
Ere the world to his valor its homage will give,
But the feathers that form Notoriety’s plume,
Are plucked in the sunshine, and live while we live.

There’s a wonderful charm in that sort of renown
Which consists in becoming “the talk of the town;”
’Tis a pleasure which none but your “truly great” feels,
To be followed about by a mob at one’s heels;
And to hear from the gazing and mouth-open throng,
The dear words “That’s he,” as one trudges along;
While Beauty, all anxious, stands up on tip-toes,
Leans on her beau’s shoulder, and lisps “There he goes.”

For this the young Dandy, half whalebone, half starch,
Parades through Broadway with the stiff Steuben march;
A new species of being, created, they say,
By nine London tailors, who ventured one day

To cabbage a spark of Promethean fire,
Which they placed in a German doll latticed with wire,
And formed of the scarecrow a Dandy divine,
But mum about tailors—I haven’t paid mine.

And for this, little Brummagem mounts with a smile
His own hackney buggy, and dashes in style
From some livery stable to Cato’s⁵² Hotel,
And though ’tis a desperate task to be striving
With these sons of John Bull in the science of driving,
We have still a few Jockies who do it as well.

There are two, “par example,” ’tis joy to behold,
With their Haytian grooms trotting graceful behind them,
In their livery jackets of blue, green, and gold,
Their bright varnished hats and the laces that bind them:
The one’s an Adonis, who, since the sad day
That he shot at himself⁵³ has been courted no more;
The other’s a name it were treason to say,
A very great man—with “two lamps⁵⁴ at his door.”

H.