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Vintage Colorado Poetry Poem of the Week March 14, 2005

Detail. Reconstructed El Pueblo trading post. El Pueblo History Museum. W. 1st & Union. Pueblo, Colorado.

The "Contents" page of T. O. Bigney's A Month with the Muses. Colorado Tales and Legends of Earlier Days, in Verse, and Some Fugitive Rhyming Lines (Denver, 1875) gives a pretty good idea of what the poet was up to one-hundred thirty years ago this month.

Title.                                                               A Tale of Black Hawk in "59" --- How a wife      was won --- (A Miner's Story.)     The game was 'poker'.  First the stakes        Were trifling sums of 'dust' ;                                                              A Tale of the Indian Massacre at Pueblo in "54"      --- (A Ranchman's Story.)      'Twas known the Utes were hostile then,        That war bands roamed around                                           The "People's Court", --- A Tale of Quartz Hill in      "Fifty-Nine".     He was named by the miners, "Dare Devil Bill",     And shunned, because ready to quarrel and kill.                                                              An Eastern Western Tale --- (Stage Driver's Story.)     The Old Bay State in the summer time     Enjoys a pleasant, genial clime ;         A Legend of the Rocky Mountains, --- Love and the     Precious Metals     Before the Aztec nations claimed        All inland south and west                                                             The First Baby Born on the Bar, A Breckenridge Tale      of "59" --- (A Miner's Story.)     A boy, a stout limbed, robust chap,     Who may be president, some day, may-hap.                                          A Lover's Leap --- A Legend of the Cucharas Valley     and Sangre de Christo Range     Her wrathful father and a band     Of friends, well armed, at his command,                                            "Fight It Out"         When the bullets' whistling breath     Stings like the keen wounds of death !                                                                  Looking Over     Looking over old letters to-day,        Looking over the past ;                                                              Colorado State        True, honest men will offer prayer    That Colorado State may be    A sovereign always---firm and free !  Note:  Colorado State is written in anticipation of statehood in 1876. Web page is based on the Table of Contents with brief quotes added and page lengths of poems replacing page numbers where poems begin.-- Vintage Colorado Poetry.

Date of Writing.      Page(s). March, 1875                 12 March, 1875                 16 March, 1875                 15 March, 1875                 14 March, 1875                   9 March, 1875                 11 March, 1875                  6 March, 1875                  4 March, 1875                  2 March, 1875                  2

Note:  Bigney also includes several other poems written at other times, the earliest 1857 and the latest May, 1875. -- Vintage Colorado Poetry.