Poetry Explorer


Classic and Contemporary Poetry


EPITAPH FOR JOSEPH BLACKETT, LATE POET AND SHOEMAKER by GEORGE GORDON BYRON

Poet Analysis

First Line: STRANGER! BEHOLD, INTERRED TOGETHER
Last Line: AND IF HE DID, 'T WERE SHAME TO 'BLACK-IT.'
Subject(s): CRITICS & CRITICISM;

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 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 Phoebus 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, 't were shame to 'Black-it.'



Home: PoetryExplorer.net