| 词汇 | mad poet of broadway |
| 词源 | Mad Poet of Broadway. As evidenced by his book of verse, Elixir of Moonshine by the Mad Poet (1822), MacDonald Clarke (1798–1842) was known as “the Mad Poet of Broadway.” The New York poet, among the first of American bohemians, drowned in the East River, possibly a suicide. Author of the “Rum Hole” (1835), in which a groghouse is “the horrible Light-House of Hell . . . built on a ledge of human bones, whose cement is of human blood.” Clarke was eulogized by Walt Whitman, among others. The Mad Poet of Broadway had no il- lusions about achieving fame while he lived, as is shown by this epigram often attributed to him. ’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 epigram may, however, derive from John Randolph’s description of Edward Livingston: “He is a man of splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. He shines and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight.” Clarke is best remembered for his couplet, “Now twilight lets her curtain down / and pins it with a star.” See poet of the d.t.’s. |
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