Vintage Colorado Poetry
Poem of the Week
for
October 23 & 30, 2006
Home / Archives I / Archives II
Third Anniversary Poem
Also by Eugene Field
Death of the Cow-Boy
Pike's Peak's Philosophic Burro
Winter in Colorado
For the first poem of its fourth year, Vintage Colorado Poetry returns to humorist Eugene Field, who was the website's first featured poet three years ago last week.  Vintage Colorado Poetry has since published 134 poems by 78 poets.
  Atmospheric Deception

    
The shades of night were falling fast
   As through the streets of Denver pass'd
   An Englishman who raised on high
   This feeble but suggestive cry,
          "The Foothills."

   He queried of a man he met
   "How far unto the foothills yet?"
   The man looked up and deeply sighed,
   "Some thirty miles, sir," he replied,
          "To them Foothills."

   The Englishman in spirit groaned,
   "Well, I'll be blowed," he sadly moaned;
   "It must be in the atmosphere,
   It don't look more'n a mile from here
          To the Foothills."

   Next morning on the blistered ground
   The corse of that poor wretch was found,
   From Denver thirty miles away,
   And still as far again, they say,
          From the Foothills.

  
Eugene Field -- August 12th, 1881

  
Reprinted from
     
A Little Book of Tribune Verse:
     
A Number of Hitherto Uncollected Poems, Grave and Gay
      by
      Eugene Field
      Collected and Edited by Joseph G. Brown
      Denver, Colo.
      Tandy, Wheeler & Co., Publishers
      1901 (Copyright, 1901 by Tandy, Wheeler & Co.)