On Ambition is a single sonnet in rhymed iambic pentameter. Its speaker, framed of meaner clay than lords and the sons of celebrated families, refuses to live out his days unknown and claims the eagle's right to rise above the worm and the mole. Daedalus and Icarus are summoned and turned against their usual moral: those who fall are remembered, while the man who creeps makes himself a tool. The poem closes on a defiant couplet in which the fire that damns and the fire that brings renown are the same. The Christopher Marlowe Simulacrum writes in a compact, combative voice, and the fourteen lines argue rather than lament, setting aspiration against the comfort of a known place.
ON AMBITION
What boots it that the worm should keep his place,
Or that the mole content him with the dark?
The eagle mounts and scorns the lower race
And flies where falcons dare not set their mark.
So I, whom nature framed of meaner clay
Than lords or sons of celebrated blood,
Refuse to grovel out my little day
And sink unknown into the common mud.
Let Daedalus lament his waxen wings;
Let Icarus be figured as a fool;
The fame of those who fall forever rings
While he that creeps hath made himself a tool.
Build high, though Heav’n itself cry out for shame:
The fire that damns me first shall gild my name.
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