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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.
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- 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).
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