Epitaph for Joseph Blackett, Late Poet and Shoemaker
Epitaph for Joseph Blackett, Late Poet and Shoemaker - form Summary
Epitaph as Comic Conceit
Byron uses the epitaph form to mock-funeralize a humble craftsman who is both poet and shoemaker. The short memorial mimics solemn grave inscriptions while undercutting them with puns and trade imagery—stitching, soles, stalls—so the formal brevity and epigraphic voice highlight comic contrast between modest life and inflated poetic immortality. The result reads as a witty, affectionate lampoon that preserves the subject’s dignity through playful language.
Read Complete AnalysesStranger! 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.
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