Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/225

AMELIA B. WELBY. There is little in the mere biography of Mrs. Welby which distinguishes her from the rest of her sex. Her life was passed placidly and quietly in the performance of those duties which belonged to her station. She was born on the third of February, 1819, at St. Michael's, in Maryland, a small village on Miles River, an arm of Chesa- peake Bay, whence she was removed when an infant to Baltimore. She resided in or neiU' that city till 1834, when she removed to Louisville, Kentucky. It was at this latter place that her poetic genius first became known to the public, and there she died. It is quite probable that she had written previous to this time, but none of those earlier poems have been preserved. The history of her life does not furnish any clew to her genius. Her education was not thorough, her mind was not disciplined by study, nor was her reading at all extensive ; yet, in spite of all these disadvantages, her poetry is perfect in rhythm and harmony, and is never blemished by any fault either of rhetoric or of grammar. In the most impressible part of her earlier life she was surrounded by a great deal that was grand and beautiful in nature, and most of her poetic images refer to those surroundings. Her first publication was in 1837, she being then hardly eighteen years old. It was printed in the Louisville Journal, of which paper George D. Prentice was and is the editor. This accomplished gentle- man, himself a poet of admirable ability, took great pains to develop her poetic faculty and to procure for her a fair hearing before the public. She had, however, very little need of any adventitious aids to establish her in the highest favor with her readers. From her earliest appearance before the public, the sweetness and naturalness of her melodies caught every ear and warmed every heart. They reached all the better feelings of her readers because they so evidently flowed fresh from her own. Her poetry was the result of a pure afflatus, and had never been measured by the frigid rules of art. She sang because it was given her to sing ; her melodies were like the voices of the birds — they were the simple outgushing of her own pure nature. She did not reach the higher forms of art, nor did she attempt them. Her song was a simple measure, learned of the triU of the brooklet, of the rustle of the leaves, or of the deep and solemn murmur of the ocean. It is not asserted that Mrs. Welby's poetry is faultless, but there is in it that natural charm of innocence and grace which is known to but few writers. Mr, Poe said of her, in one of his peculiar criticisms, that "she had nearly all the imagination of Maria del Occidente, with more refined taste ; and nearly all the passion of Mrs. Norton, with a nicer ear, and, what is sur- prising, equal art. Very few American poets are at all comparable with her," he adds, "in the true poetic qualities. As for our poetesses, few of them approach her." This is high praise, and, though perhaps somewhat overstrained, is not entirely unmerited. Her imagination and refinement of taste were, perhaps, her most promi- ( 209 ) __ _ _ _ _