ON THE VANITY OF EARTHLY GREATNESS 

     --by Arthur Guiterman

Discuss irony in “On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness.”

Arthur Guiterman’s poem ‘On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness,’ divided into four stanzas of a couplet each, is an ironical poem that touches upon the vanity of human/ earthly greatness and demonstrates how such vanity must finally give in to the remorselessly destructive power of time.

The irony is, in fact, pervasive throughout the poem and is captured in each last phrase in the first three couplets and in the first line in the last couplet. The first couplet, for instance, invokes an image of the powerful tusks of mastodons or mammoths employed in the fiercest of battles turning into billiard balls. The invocation here is to suggest how the supposed might of a ferocious, gigantic creature finally turns into an object of play and gets tossed around by petty force. The same applies to the sword of Charlemagne the Just that helped the conqueror win over most of Western Europe but has now ultimately and ironically turned into rust with no power whatsoever. Besides, it is equally ironic that the fearsome grizzly bear ends up becoming a rug for all to tread on and wipe their shoe sole with. Likewise, the fact that Great Caesar, a statesman and general of Rome who lived around 103—44 BC, has been turned into a bust to decorate one’s shelf also shows the ironical fate that the supposed bravery must share at the end. It is with this knowledge then that the speaker ultimately suggests in a very indirect manner that his own vanity, too, is approaching an end since he doesn’t feel well himself.