He who writes prose builds his temple to Fame in rubble; he who writes verses builds it in granite.

Bulwer-Lytton contrasts the perceived durability of literary forms: prose, however ambitious, is likened to a monument built from “rubble,” while verse is “granite,” suggesting greater permanence and prestige. The image draws on an old hierarchy in which poetry is treated as the highest, most enduring art—more easily memorized, quoted, and canonized—whereas prose is seen as more contingent on fashion and circumstance. Read less literally, the aphorism is also about craft and compression: verse’s formal constraints can force density, music, and mnemonic power, which help writing survive its moment. At the same time, the claim is polemical, reflecting a Romantic/Victorian valuation of poetry rather than an objective rule.