Read "Epitaph for Joseph Blackett, Late Poet and Shoemaker" by Lord Byron online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Stranger! behold, interr'd together, / The souls of learning and of leather. / Poor Joe is gone, but left his all: / You'll find his relics in a stall.
His works were neat, and often found / Well stitch'd, and with morocco bound.
Tread lightly - where the bard is laid / He cannot mend the shoe he made; / Yet is he happy in his hole, / With verse immortal as his sole. / But still to business he held fast, / And stuck to Phobus to the last.
Then who shall say so good a fellow / Was only ‘leather and prunella? ' / For character - he did not lack it / And if he did, ‘twere shame to ‘ / Black it.
Malta, May 16, 1811.