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Show Mile High City 133 Education, and the Women's Auxiliary of Goodwill Industries. She was active in the Friends of the Denver Public Library and the affairs of the University of Denver. She and Harold became sponsors of the Central City Opera House Association, the Denver Symphony, and the Red Rocks Festival. Harold was often gone on business trips, but as one who had her own social life before her marriage, Madelyn had no hesitancy in attending important events without him or with a friend. Madelyn loved to be with people and tried to make them comfortable, whatever the situation. She was energetic, had a sense of humor, and was noted for acts of individual kindness. She drew around her women with similar interests and strengths. An early poem of the Denver era was a sonnet dedicated to friends, to their happy influence, and wistfully to their comings and goings. She compares their brilliance and transience with song birds: SHADOWS New friends are like bright birds that hover low, And dip and swoop above the still blue lake, The deep lake that is you. Sometimes they shake Their strong and tender wings, and ripples slow Disturb the placid surface with their flow. And sometimes, springing high, their course they take In airy blueness; their fresh song will break In quick, ecstatic rapture as they go. They soar on upward. My glad gaze will follow Each widening wheel on wheel against the sky. The flight of vaunting lark or swooping swallow I watch them go, with only half a sigh; And so, content, my truant thought slips home, To watch the changing lake, where shadows roam. Madelyn herself was both a bright bird soaring upward and who knew about the "deep lake that is you." Knowing enough of life-both its high emotions and its wearing depres sions of spirit-she could express her philosophy in verse that caught this dualism. one |
