Classic Poem

OBIT JULY 27, 1887, KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI

GIFTED, and loved and praised
By every friend;
Never a murmur raised
Against him, to the end!
With tireless interest
He wrought as he thought best, —
And — lo, we bend
Where now he takes his rest!

His heart was loyal, to
Its latest thrill,
To the home-loves he knew —
And now forever will, —
Mother and brother — they
The first to pass away, —
And, lingering still,
The sister bowed to-day.

Pure as a rose might be,
And sweet, and white,
His father's memory
Was with him day and night: —
He spoke of him, as one
May now speak of the son, —
Sadly and tenderly,
Yet as a trump had done.

Say, then, of him: He knew
Full depths of care
And stress of pain, and you
Do him scant justice there, —
Yet in the lifted face
Grief left not any trace,
Nor mark unfair,
To mar its manly grace.

It was as if each day
Some new hope dawned —
Each blessing in delay,
To him, was just beyond;
Between whiles, waiting, he
Drew pictures cunningly —
Fantastic — fond —
Things that we laughed to see.

Sometimes, as we looked on
His crayon's work,
Some angel-face would dawn
Out radiant, from the mirk
Of features old and thin,
Or jowled with double-chin,
And eyes asmirk,
And gaping mouths agrin.

That humor in his art,
Of genius born,
Welled warmly from a heart
That could not but adorn
All things it touched with love —
The eagle, as the dove —
The burst of morn —
The night — the stars above.

Sometimes, amid the wild
Of faces queer,
A mother, with her child
Pressed warm and close to her;
This, I have thought, somehow,
The wife, with head abow,
Unreconciled,
In the great shadow now.
...

O ye of sobbing breath,
Put by all sighs
Of anguish at his death —
Turn — as he turned his eyes,
In that last hour, unknown
In strange lands, all alone —
Turn thine eyes toward the skies,
And, smiling, cease thy moan.