Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/288

FORTUNATUS COSBY. FoRTUNATUS CosBT was bom on Harrod's Creek, near Louisville, Kentucky, on the second day of May, in the year 1802. His father, after whom he was named, was an influential lawyer. Fortunatus was liberally educated. He was a student at Transylvania University, in Lexington, Kentucky, and graduated at Yale College. He adopted the profession in which his father had become distinguished, but never devotedly pursued it. He has been one of the most admired contributors of the Louisville Journal, and in 1846 wrote a number of charming poems for The Examiner, the emancipation journal, which was, in that year, published by John C. Vaughn, in Louisville. Since 1850 Mr. Cosby has not given to the public any token of famiharity with the haunts of the muses. His poems ai'e all mellifluous, and are not less felicitous in conception than delightful in rhythm. Mr. Cosby has been twice married — in 1825 at Louisville, and in 1854 at Wash- ington City, where he now resides, holding a clerkship in the United States Treasury Department. His son Robert, who died when he was about twenty years of age, gave promise of excellence as a poet He was lamented by a lai'ge a circle of friends as a young man of rare gifts. THE SOLITARY FOUNTAIN. There is a nook in a lonely glen. Hidden away from the haunts of men. Where the antelope bounds with graceful leap. And rock-goats browse on the dizzy steep ; — And it nestles there Mid the mountains bare, That nook, like a gem, in its rocky keep. In that fairy spot the wild grape-vine Weaves its lithe tendrils with many a twine, Mid the bending boughs of a bending tree. And a crystal fountain gushes free, And dances along With a quiet song, To mingle its rill with river and sea. (2 And thither, at morning's freshest prime. And at dewy evening's resting time — At sultry noon, when the spirits sink. Around that fountain's moss-cover'd brink, From the open glades And the forest shades The beautiful creatures came to drink. The first and the fairest flowers of spring, The last, that in Autumn their perfumes bring : — Each odorous breath the breeze has stii-r'd. The sweetest song of the sweetest bird, By the gentle nymph, Who watches the lymph. Are the soonest felt and the soonest heard. The spirit of Peace is hovering near ; Neither bird nor beast have aught to fear ; 72)