“Death is master of lord and clown.
Close the coffin and hammer it down.”

Act V, scene 3. Similar thought in William Shakespeare, King Henry V.
Richard III (altered) (1700)

"The Human Situation"
The Still Centre (1939)
Context: And if this I were destroyed,
The image shattered,
My perceived, rent world would fly
In an explosion of final judgement
To the ends of the sky,
The colour in the iris of the eye.
Opening, my eyes say 'Let there be light',
Closing, they shut me in a coffin.

As quoted in "Patch Adams and clowns spreading laughter at hospital" (2 March 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gtw5nzgYpA
Context: You know, it's always the same. I've clowned in 81 countries. People hunger for love, and clowning is a trick to get love close. As a clown I can do things that people are too frightened of Love to allow you to do.

Stanza 7
Poems (1820), Ode to a Nightingale
Context: Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Funhouse, written by Pink, Tony Kanal and Jimmy Harry
Song lyrics, Funhouse (2008)

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.269

Source: Titus Andronicus

Quoted in Humor & Caricature (January 1996), p. 3

The runic inscription upon the scabbard of Dyrnwyn, correctly read by the bard Taliesin, in Chapter 19
The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book V : The High King (1968)