Poet & Shoemaker.
Joseph Blackett.
Stranger behold interred together
The lords of learning and of leather.
Poor Joe is gone but left his awl
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 he is happy in his hole
With verse immortal as his soul;
But still to business he held fast
And stuck to Pheabus to the last.
Then who shall say so good a fellow
Was only leather and prunello?
For character he did not lack it
And if he did't were shame to Blackett.
Poor Betty Conway, she drank lemonade at a masquerade,
So now she's dead and gone away.
Robert Master, Undertaker.
Here lies Bob Master. Faith! t'was very hard
To take away an honest Robin's breath.
Yes, surely Robin was full well prepared
For he was always looking out for death.
Taken from "The Lady's Magazine and Musical Repository," Jan., 1801.
Epitaph on a Bird.
Here lieth, aged three months the body of Richard Acanthus a young person of unblemished character. He was taken in his callow infancy from the wing of a tender parent by the rough and pitiless hand of a two-legged animal without feathers.
Though born with the most aspiring disposition and unbending love of freedom he was closely confined in a grated prison and scarcely permitted to view those fields of which he had an undoubted charter.
Deeply sensible of this infringement of his natural rights he was often heard to petition for redress in the most plaintive notes of harmonious sorrow. At length his imprisoned soul burst the prison which his body could not and left a lifeless heap of beauteous feathers.