Fame - a few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on.

Bovee reduces “fame” to its starkest residue: the brief epitaph that survives a person’s life. By adding that even those few words are “not to be depended on,” he underscores how reputation is both compressed and distorted by time. The line critiques the human desire for posthumous recognition, suggesting that what endures is not a faithful record but a curated, sometimes flattering inscription shaped by survivors, convention, or mythmaking. In this view, fame is less an achievement than a fragile narrative—short, secondhand, and unreliable—inviting skepticism toward public memory and the stories societies tell about the dead.