Fine phrases I value more than bank-notes. I have ear for no other harmony than the harmony of words. To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.

Smith’s speaker elevates literary artistry above material wealth: “fine phrases” are prized more than money, and the only “harmony” worth hearing is verbal music. The closing line reframes ambition as a desire for afterlife in language—being “occasionally quoted” rather than broadly celebrated or richly rewarded. Read as a credo of the poet-aesthete, it suggests that lasting value lies in memorable expression and the transmission of words through other minds. It also carries a hint of self-aware irony: the wish to be quoted is itself a bid for a particular kind of immortality, achieved not through power or property but through phrasing that survives.