McDonald Clarke

Tis vain for present fame to wish--
Our persons first must be forgotten;
For poets are like stinking fish--
They never shine until they're rotten.

McDonald Clarke (1798 – 1842) was a poet of some fame in New York in the early part of the 19th century.

Quotes

• Whilst twilight's curtain spreading far,
  Was pinned with a single star.
  • Death in Disguise (Boston edition, 1833), line 227. A number of variants are reported:
  • While twilight's curtain gathering far
    Is pinned with a single diamond star.
  • Now twilight lets her curtain down,
    And pins it with a star.
  • Compare: "And drew my midnight curtain with fingers bloody red", Thomas Hood, Dream of Eugene Aram; "The moon is a silver pinhead vast, That holds the heavens tent-hangings fast", William R. Alger, "The Use of the Moon", Poetry of the Orient (1865), p. 178.

• Tis vain for present fame to wish--
  Our persons first must be forgotten;
  For poets are like stinking fish--
  They never shine until they're rotten.
  • The Elixir of Moonshine (1820).

• Ha! see where the wild-blazing Grog-shop appears,
  As the red waves of wretchedness swell;
  How it burns on the edge of tempestuous years—
  The horrible Light-house of Hell!
  • The Rum-hole, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).