Colorado skies! Colorado’s lustrous skies! In those clear wells above, Where the unimpaired optic never tires to rove, Behold! two sable eagles--their wheeling flights pursue, The only fleeting shadows in those arching vaults of blue. Colorado skies! Colorado’s peerless skies! Oh, what sweet dreams, what joyous hopes arise, To all who cast their destinies beneath Colorado’s wondrous skies. Colorado skies! Colorado’s splendid skies! At dawn, when swift the curling mists arise; When crimson-colored flame, the orient horizon o’erspreads, And shy day-nymphs awake from slumber on their golden beds, ’Tis then that smiling Fortune, lavishly rewards the bold emprise Of those who wisely early rise beneath Colorado’s matchless skies. Colorado skies! Colorado’s glorious skies! No lowering clouds--no lingering mists arise. How bright to-day--how propitious are Colorado’s skies. _WILD-WOODLAND RAMBLINGS_ Down--adown among the green, wild-woodland alleys, And across the sweet valleys, Through forests of spruce trees and pine; With the birds, and the beasts, and the flowers for my allies I rove--oh I rove, with “The Spirit Divine.” Down, deep down in the wild rocky canons; Up, high up on the cool sterile plateau’s above, Joy, Joy and Hope are still my companions, For, oh, for, oh, I am charmed and elated wherever I rove. Down, then--down through the green leafy alleys, And across the sweet valleys Deeper, deeper still into forests of aspens and pine; Thus, thus ’mongst tall, shady groves I am daily making new sallies, For, oh, for oh, the much-roving spirits of gladness and of song-singing madness are mine. _DOWN AMONG THE GRASSES_ Down--adown among the tall green grasses By the spring-fed pool, Where the flowers nod and beckon in the wind that passes-- Nod and beckon like sweet little lassies Like fair little Hellenic lassies, (glancing with their bright eyes) Like fair little Hellenic lassies, just turned loose from their classical classes Like glad little Grecian children just a-coming home from school. And the dragon-flies in their bright cuirasses And the crickets that chirrup by rule, And the clouds floating by in great, white, cumulous masses, And the small, glad voices, and the flowers and the grasses, And the sky and the clouds mirrored way down in the pool, Makes one dream of the old song-sacred Parnassus, And of the nymph-haunted Hippocrene cool. And we sigh for the poet’s winged-steed Pegasus Just to soar away up high! Just to scale those wild aerial passes, Just to rise above those great, white, cumulous, cloud masses, And to plunge and tumble down the blue vaults of the sky.