Vintage Colorado Poetry Poem of the Week July 19, 2004

Edith Colby Banfield's aunt was Helen Hunt Jackson, and Ms. Banfield like her famous relative was drawn to Colorado Springs for the mountains, the dry climate, and the air. "Mariposa" is butterfly in Spanish.

W.L. Wagner @ USDA-NRCS Plants Database

Mariposa Lilies We saw them on the side of dark Cheyenne,       Pale-gleaming in the moonlight as we           rode, For night had closed around us again And laid its beauty on us like a load. Before us stretched the prairies as a sea, The mountains and the moon rose up behind, And strangeness was afloat upon the wind. A murmur of things past and things to be, Their startling loveliness besought us there Like some sweet thought that cometh unaware, Their pale cups lifted to the heavens wide, So slender-stemmed upon the mountain side !                        --Edith Colby Banfield From The Place of My Desire and Other Poems, Boston, 1904.

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