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 you 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.