Luther A. Todd — 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.