On Being Asked for an Autograph in Venice

Amid these fragments of heroic days, When thought met deed with mutual passions’ leap, There sits a Fame whose silent trump makes cheap What short-lived rumour of ourselves we raise; They had far other estimate of praise Who stamped the signet of their soul so deep In art and action, and whose memories keep Their height like stars above our misty ways; In this grave presence to record my name, Something within me hangs the head and shrinks; Dull were the soul without some joy in Fame: Yet here to claim remembrance were, methinks, Like him who in the desert’s awful frame, Notches his cockney initials on the sphinx.