Epitaph for Joseph Blackett, Poet and Shoemaker

STRANGER! behold, interred 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 stitched, 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 Phœbus 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.”