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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 The Elixir of Moonshine (1820)

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More quotes by McDonald Clarke

Whilst twilight's curtain spreading far,
Was pinned with a single star.

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!

While twilight's curtain gathering far,
Is pinned with a single diamond star.

All McDonald Clarke quotes →

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There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

T. S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

George Chapman Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

Michael Faraday

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: McDonald Clarke (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.