Sharlot Hall

Sharlot Hall Poems

Sharlot Hall Biography

Sharlot Mabridth Hall (October 27, 1870 – April 9, 1943) was an American journalist, poet and historian. She was the first woman to hold an office in the Arizona Territorial government and her personal collection of photographs and artifacts served as the starting collection for a history museum which bears her name. Hall was born to James Polk Knox and Adeline Susannah Boblett Hall in Lincoln County, Kansas on October 27, 1870. In November 1881, her family followed the Santa Fe Trail to Arizona Territory, moving to the Orchard Ranch on the Lynx Creek 20 miles south of Prescott. During the trip, near Dodge City, she was thrown from her horse and suffered an injury to her back or hip. The pain of the injury would remain with her the rest of her life. Hall was educated in public schools, first near the present location of Dewey, Arizona and later in Prescott. At an early age, Hall demonstrated an interest and talent in poetry. Upon graduation she went to Los Angeles to attend the Cumnock School Of Expression. In 1921 Hall received an honorary Bachelor of Arts from the University of Arizona. At the age of 20, Hall sold her first article to a children's magazine for US$4.00. By age 22 she was working as a journalist, poet, and essayist. Hall became a regular contributor to Charles Lummis' magazine Land of Sunshine and in 1901, when two other poets were unable to complete their deadline, she wrote the poem which announced the magazine's new name of Out West. In 1906, Hall was promoted to associate editor for the magazine. In 1905, when legislation to admit Arizona Territory and New Mexico Territory as a single combined state was proposed in the U.S. Congress, Hall responded by writing the poem Arizona. The poem, which mocked the proposal and made the case for Arizona's independent statehood, was published in several publications and a copy of the poem was given to every member of Congress. In 1909, Hall was appointed Territorial Historian by Governor Sloan. This was followed the next year with the release of Cactus and pine: songs of the Southwest, her first compilation. In 1911, Hall made a trip to the Arizona Strip in an effort to raise awareness of the area's potential among Arizona residents and prevent Utah from obtaining the region as Nevada had obtained Pah-Ute County in 1866. In 1912 she resigned as Territorial Historian and returned to her family ranch to care for her parents. Hall returned to the public view in 1923 with the release of an expanded version of Cactus and pine containing a selection of additional poems. This was followed by her selection as a presidential elector, voting for Calvin Coolidge, in 1925. Hall wore a custom dress made of copper for the balloting ceremony. She also used her trip to Washington D.C. to visit a variety of museums and learn about their management. Following the death of her father, Hall acquired the cabin which had served as the "Governor's mansion" for Arizona Territory's first governors. In addition to her living quarters, she used the building to house her collection of artifacts related to Arizona pioneers and pre-historic Yavapai county. This move was followed, in 1928, with her founding of the Prescott Historical Society. The same year she opened what she called the Old Governor's Mansion Museum, now known as the Sharlot Hall Museum. Over the following years, Hall oversaw the expansion of her museum through the acquisition of a variety of additional historical buildings. She was also a popular speaker, giving talks on local history and folklore to schools and clubs throughout the state. Hall died on April 9, 1943 and was buried in a family plot in Prescott's Pioneer Cemetery. Two years after her death, the Prescott Historical Society changed their name to the Sharlot Hall Historical Society. Additionally, Hall was among the first to be inducted to Arizona's Women Hall of Fame. In 1984, the Sharlot Hall Award was established and is awarded annually to "an Arizona woman who has made a valuable contribution to the understanding and awareness of Arizona and its history.")

The Best Poem Of Sharlot Hall

The West

When the world of waters was parted by the stroke of a mighty rod,
Her eyes were first of the lands of earth to look on the face of God;
The white mists robed and throned her, and the sun in his orbit wide
Bent down from his ultimate pathway and claimed her his chosen bride;
And he who had formed and dowered her with the dower of a royal queen,
Decreed her the strength of mighty hills, the peace of the plains between;
The silence of utmost desert, and canyons rifted and riven,
And the music of wide-flung forests were strong winds shout to heaven.

Then high and apart he set her and bade the gray seas guard,
And the lean sands clutching her garments' hem keep stern and solemn ward.
What dreams she knew as she waited! What strange keels touched her shore!
And feet went into the stillness and returned to the sea no more.
They passed through her dream like shadows — till she woke one pregnant morn
And watched Magellan's white-winged ships swing round the ice-bound Horn;
She thrilled to their masterful presage, those dauntless sails from afar,
And laughed as she leaned to the ocean till her face shone out like a star.

And men who toiled in the drudging hives of a world as flat as a floor
Thrilled in their souls to her laughter and turned with face to the door;
And creeds as hoary as Adam, and feuds as old as Cain,
Fell deaf on the ear that harkened and caught that far refrain;
Into dungeons by light forgotten, and prisons of grim despair,
Hope came with pale reflection of her star on the swooning air;
And the old, hedged, human whirlpool, with its seething misery,
Broke bound, as a pent-up river breaks through to the healing sun.

Calling, calling, calling; resistless, imperative, strong;
Soldier and priest and dreamer — she drew them, a mighty throng.
The unmapped seas took tribute of many a dauntless band,
And many a brave hope measured but bleaching bones in the sand;
Yet for one that fell, a hundred sprang out to fill his place,
For death at her call was sweeter than life in a tamer race.
Sinew and bone she drew them; steel-thewed—and the weaklings shrank;
Grim-wrought of granite and iron were the men of her foremost rank.

Stern as the land before them, and strong as the waters crossed;
Men who had looked on the face of defeat nor counted the battle lost;
Uncrowned rulers and statesmen, shaping their daily need
To the law of brother with brother, till the world stood by to heed;
The sills of a greater empire they hewed and hammered and turned
And the torch of a larger freedom from their blazing hilltops burned;
Till the old ideals that had led them grew dim as a childhood's dream,
And Caste went down in the balance, and Manhood stood supreme.

The wanderers of earth turned to her, outcast of the older lands;
With a promise and hope in their pleading, and she reached them pitying hands;
And she cried to the Old World cities that drowse by the Eastern main:
'Send me your weary, house-worn broods and I'll send you men again!
Lo, here in my wind-swept reaches, by my marshalled peaks of snow,
Is room for a larger reaping than your o'er-tilled fields can grow;
Seed of the Man-seed springing to stature and strength in my sun,
Free, with a limitless freedom no battles of men, have won.'

For men, like the grain of the cornfields, grow small in the huddled crowd;
And weak for the breath of spaces where a soul may speak aloud;
For hills like stairways to heaven, shaming the level track;
And sick with the clang of pavements, and the marts of the trafficking pack;
Greatness is born of greatness, and breadth of a breadth profound;
The old Antaean fable of strength renewed from the ground
Was a human truth for the ages; since the hour of Eden-birth,
That man among men was the strongest who stood with his feet on the earth.

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