(This historic book may have numerous typos and missing te...)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1836 Excerpt: ...It must make the thoughtful often smile, To see how the world is fooled by Fame, How that, which can last but a little while, Is tricked off, with a tawdry name, Held up in the lighted place, To blind the weak of a blundering race. There's a Thing on a pile of wood, Painted, and gilded, all about, That would bribe Wisdom, if 't could, To join in Grandeur's silly shout, And fawn around a little clay, That shrinks from the curse of yesterday. 'Tis the Pet of Pride, and Fame, Who bolster its sickly honours up, While Wisdom turns his head, in shame, And spurns sly Flattery's wildering cup J All who take it to their lips, Grow blind, and grope in Truth's eclipse. 'Tis Folly fleshly God--a King, That bends but to the belly-ache, Death laughs at its signet ring, And soon will all its glories take, While the Sexton whistles, and scratches his head, And cocks his hat o'er the haughty dead. Hard, perhaps, will Time's idol fare, When he gives at Heaven's door a rap--For earthly titles are trifles there, The folks all stare at a crown'd chap: Order a foolscap, instead of the crown, And tell him his way is down, down. The beggar is a better fellow, then--Finds a kiss, where the other feels a kick, And tho' the praise of a purchased pen May laud, till common sense is sick; Yet the titled Booby will there be worth, Somewhat less, than he was on earth. As he stands with his crown in his trembling hand, Waiting to see if they'll let him in, He, whose smile lit the sea and land, Is shadow'd, by the ghost of many a sin, That rises now o'er his naked head, To hurry him down to the howling dead. How has your time on earth been spent 1 The Devil winks when that he hears--Half the world around my throne has bent, And my slightest frown has darken'd years.--But what have you done,...
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McDonald Clarke was born on June 18, 1878 in Bath, Maine, United States. By the age of nine, he was living in New London, Connecticut, sheltered by his mother, with John G. C. Brainard as playmate. In manhood, Clarke remembered his boyhood as an unhappy one, on account of peculiarities of his own that made him subject to the taunts of other boys. When he was twelve, the death of his mother left him alone, grief-stricken, and apparently without resources.
By 1819 Clarke had moved to New York City. Here he soon became a familiar figure about town: tall and slight in body, with a striking face, well- formed mouth, aquiline nose, grayish-blue eyes shadowed with melancholy, characteristically clad in a long dark-blue frock coat with a large turn-over collar enlivened by a red silk neckerchief. His personality was vivid and his temperament volatile. Music could affect him to tears, social injustice or fashionable folly to wrath; and suffering to sympathy or sentimentality. Terse and witty in repartee, he easily routed those who attempted to make sport of his eccentricities. Not even his friends knew where to draw the line in his case between mild insanity and deliberate pose, but the character of his madness in later life dispels the idea that he was a mere poseur. His insanity, however, was harmless to others and he possessed no vices.
He attended the fashionable Grace Church on Broadway regularly. Clarke, constantly penniless and living often on the bounty of his friends, impoverished himself by a generosity, frequently freakish, to those more in need than himself. Friendly by nature, he sought to cultivate companionships which his mental disorder intervened to limit. Nevertheless he won a measure of regard from Fitz-Greene Halleck who frequently helped him over hard places, and commemorated him in a humorous poem, “The Discarded. ”
During the last year of his life, Clarke became almost constantly insane; and, on March 5, 1842, he was drowned in water running from an open faucet in a cell of the Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. He seems to have been a prolific writer, but much of his verse received only ephemeral publication, and in consequence most of the editions are now rare. Any object or incident in his neighborhood could form the nucleus of a poem, and many a belle of the town, not always to her delight, found herself the subject of his writings. His verse is frequently grotesque in its irregularity, expressing scornful and even violent indignation against snobbery or social injustice; but it is also often genuinely humorous, tender, or intelligently satirical. Little or none of his verse is remembered to-day save the couplet: “Now twilight lets her curtain down And pins it with a star. ”
(This historic book may have numerous typos and missing te...)
Clarke had the eccentric personality, wore the odd dress and lived all his life in poverty.
McDonald Clarke was married to Mary Brundage, an actress, against the wishes of her mother. Their extreme poverty finally made them separated.
