Classic Poem

LATE POET AND SHOEMAKER

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 Phaebus 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."
Malta, May 16, 1811. [First published, 1832.]