Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 7.djvu/39

But Romanelli was so stout,
He beat all three—and blew it out.

October, 1810.
[First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, i. 240.]

SUBSTITUTE FOR AN EPITAPH.

Kind Reader! take your choice to cry or laugh;
Here Harold lies—but where's his Epitaph?
If such you seek, try Westminster, and view
Ten thousand just as fit for him as you.

Athens, 1810.
[First published, Lord Byron's Works, 1832, ix. 4.]

EPITAPH FOR JOSEPH BLACKET, LATE POET AND SHOEMAKER.^[1]

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.

1. [For Joseph Blacket (1786-1810), see Letters, 1898, i. 314, note 2; see, too, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 359, note 1, and 441-443, note 2. The Epitaph is of doubtful authenticity.]