Past Poet Laureate
Poem of the Week
March 1, 2004
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September 13, 1883, Colorado completed the first quarter
century of its wonderful history---the Nation's youngest child ;
and very large and frisky for her age.
The barnacles held a reunion on that occasion, and it
occured to me while at the banquet, and listening to the toasts,
that incidents in the lives of the brave people who
"First spied the country out, and pioneered the way,"
might make an interesting book, and now was the time to do
the work, when the stories could be gathered from the lips of
those who had taken part in the "First Act," over which the
curtain had just dropped.
Scholarly iconoclasts have annihilated William Tell and his
apple by showing that no mention of them was made in
Switzerland 'till about two centuries after Tell's supposed time.
The story of Romulus, Remus and the wolf, that so charmed us
in our irrepressible and sympathetic years, is now a fable.
I solemnly avow that the tales herein related are---"told as
they were told to me !"
If I have succeeded in reviving some pleasant recollection for
the "old timer," beguiling the weary traveler or interesting the
general reader, my aspirations have, in a measure, been reached.
If I have betrayed confidence or told anything that I ought not
to have told---I will graciously accept all apologies.
THE AUTHOR.
Reprinted from Tales of the Colorado Pioneers by Alice Polk Hill, Denver, 1884.
Please click for Mrs. Hill's 1921 poem The Message of the Tree.