Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/227

lSaO-40.] AMELIA B. WE LEY. 211 sation, though sometimes frivolous, was always charming. She loved to give the rein to her fancy, to invent situations and circumstances for herself and her friends, and to talk of them as if they were realities. Her social life was full of innocent gayety and playfulness. She was the idol of her friends, and she repaid their affection with her whole heart. Her character was as beautiful as her manners were simple. Courted and flattered as she was, she was, perhaps, a little willful, and sometimes even obstinate, but an appeal to her affections always softened and won her. Her willfulness was that of a wayward, petted child, and had a charm even in its most posi- tive exhibitions. Mrs. Welby's maiden name was Coppuck. She was married in June, 1838, to George Welby, a large merchant of Louisville, and a gentleman entirely worthy to be the husband of the woman and the poetess. She had but one child, a boy, who was born but two months before her death. She died on the third of May, 1852, in her thirty-third year. Her prose writings consist only of her correspondence. Her letters and notes, however, sometimes assumed the form of compositions or sketches. The following is an illustration of the style of many of them. She had been visited at her residence by a party of gay masqueraders, among whom was a very intimate friend costumed as a Turk, and bearing the euphonious sobriquet of Hamet Ali Ben Khorassen. On the day after this visit, Mrs. Welby received from this pseudo Pashaw a note of fare- well written in the redundant style of the Orientals, to which the following is her answer : Although a stranger to the graceful style of Oriental greeting, Amelia, the daughter of the Christiau, would send to Hamet Ali Ben Khorassen, ere he departs from the midst of her people, a few words in token of farewell, and also in acknowledgment of the flowery epistle sent by the gal- lant Ben Khorassen to the " Bulbul of the Giaour Land," as he is pleased, in the poetical language of his country, to designate the humblest of his admirers ! Like the sudden splendor of a dazzling meteor, gleaming before the delighted eye of the startled gazer, was the brief sojourn of the noble Ben Khorassen in the presence of the happy " Bulbul." He came before her uniting in his aspect the majesty of a god of old with the mien of a mortal — graceful in his step, winning in his words, yet " terrible as an army with banners." The song of the "Bulbul" was hushed ; the words of greeting died upon her lip. But now that the mightiest of the mighty has withdrawn from her dazzled gaze the glory of his overpowering presence, the trembling "Bulbul" lifts her head once more like a drooping flower oppressed by the too powerful rays of the noontide sun ; and in the midst of the gloom that overshadows her, recalls to mind every word and look of the gallant Ben Khorassen, till her thoughts of him arise like stars upon the horizon of her memory, lighting up the gloom of his absence, and glittering upon the waters of the fountain of her heart, whose every murmur is attuned to the music of his memory. But the bark of Hamet Ali Ben Khorassen floats upon the waters with her white wings spread for the clime of the crescent. Her brilliant pennon streams from the strand, and the words of the " Bulbul " must falter into a farewell. May the favoring gales of paradise, fragrant as the breath of houris, fill the silken sails of Ben Khorassen, and waft him onward to his native groves of citron and of myrtle, waking thoughts in his bosom fresh and fragrant as the flowers that cluster in Lis clime ! Thus prays Amelia, the daughter of the Christian, and the " Bulbul of the Giaour Laud ! " Farewell ! This exceedingly graceful and tasteful little note is but a single specimen of a sort of composition with which Mrs. Welby delighted to indulge her intimate friends.