DEATH OF DR. TODD, THE PRINCIPAL OF THE RETREAT FOR THE INSANE, IN CONN.
Few have been mourned like thee. The wise and good
Do gather many weepers round their tomb,
And true Affection makes her heart an urn
For the departed idol, till that heart
Is ashes. With such sorrow art thou mourned,
And more than this. There is a cry of woe
Within the halls of yon majestic dome—
A tide of grief, which Reason may not check,
Nor Faith's deep anchor fathom.
Straining eyes
That gaze on vacancy, do search for thee,
Whose wand could put to flight the fancied ills
Of sick imagination. The wrecked heart
Keepeth the echo of thy soothing voice
An everlasting sigh within its cells,
And morbidly upon that music feeds.
Mind's broken column 'mid its ruins bears
Thy chiselled features. Thy dark eye looks forth
From Memory's watch-tower on the phrenzy dream,
Ruling its imagery, or with strange power
Controlling madness, as the shepherd's harp
Subdued the moody wrath of Israel's king.
Even where the links of thought and speech are broke,
'Mid that most absolute and perfect wreck,
When throneless Reason flies her idiot-foe,
Thou hast a place. The fragments of the soul
Do bear thine impress—shadowy, yet endeared,
