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Fifty-One Tales · Chapter

The Assignation explained

The poet creates enduring songs for Fame, but she prefers the ephemeral garlands of the crowd.

What happens

The poet creates enduring songs for Fame, but she prefers the ephemeral garlands of the crowd. When he rebukes her, she promises to meet him in a graveyard in a hundred years.

Themes in this chapter

  • Fame and Notoriety

    Fame is personified as fickle, preferring cheap popularity over the poet's lasting art.

  • Time and Mortality

    The poet's chaplets are meant for the courts of Time, and Fame's assignation is set a hundred years hence in a graveyard.

Characters to notice

  • Unknown

    The poet who toils for Fame and is scorned by her.

  • Fame

    Lovely Fame, who trifles with adventurers and mocks the poet, yet promises a future meeting.

  • Time

    Implied as the court where the poet's chaplets are meant to be worn.

Key passages

  • “Fame singing in the highways, and trifling as she sang, with sordid adventurers, passed the poet by.”

    Fame sang carelessly in public places, amusing herself with lowly companions, and ignored the poet.

    Establishes Fame's disdain for the poet's serious devotion.

  • “I will meet you in the graveyard at the back of the Workhouse in a hundred years.”

    Fame promises to rendezvous with the poet in a pauper's cemetery a century from now.

    A haunting pledge that links fame to death and delayed recognition.

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