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AMELIA B. WELCY.

(Born 1821-Died 1852)

AMELIA B. WELBY, whose maiden name was COPPUCK, was born in the small town of St. Michael's, in Maryland, in 1821. When she was about fourteen years of age, her father removed to Lexington and afterward to Louisville, in Kentucky, where, in 1838, she was married to Mr. George B. Welby, a merchant of that city.

Mrs. Welby made herself known at a very early age by numerous poetical pieces printed, under the signature of "Amelia," in the Louisville Journal, which is edited by Mr. George D. Prentice, (a gentleman deserving as much reputation for his literary abilities as for his wit,) and has been a medium for the original appearance of much of the best poetry of the West.

In 1844 a collection of her poems appeared in a small octavo volume at Boston, and their popularity has been so great that it has since passed through four or five large editions. This success must have surprised as much as it gratified the amiable and modest poet, for, writing to me in the summer of 1843, she observed in reference to a suggestion I had made to her- "My husband and friends here also desire greatly to have a collection of my little poems published, but really I am afraid they are not worth it. Many of them

THE RAINBOW.

I SOMETIMES have thoughts, in my loneliest hours,
That lie on my heart like the dew on the flowers,
Of a ramble I took one bright afternoon
When my heart was as light as a blossom in June;
The green earth was moist with the late fallen showers,
The breeze fluttered down and blew open the flowers,
While a single white cloud, to its haven of rest
On the white wing of Peace, floated off in the west.
As I threw back my tresses to catch the cool breeze,
That scattered the rain-drops and dimpled the seas,
Far up the blue sky a fair rainbow unrolled
Its soft-tinted pinions of purple and gold.
"I was born in a moment, yet, quick as its birth,
It had stretched to the uttermost ends of the earth,
And, fair as an angel, it floated as free,
With a wing on the earth and a wing on the sea.
How calm was the ocean! how gentle its swel
Like a woman's soft bosom it rose and it fell;

that

were written when I was so very young, at the sober age of twenty-two I can scarcely read them without a blush." With the same letter she sent me the manuscript of one of her longest poems, entitled Pulpit Eloquence. It is now before me, and though scarcely a believer in Mr Poe's ingenious speculations. upon "autograpny," I see in the elaborate neatness and distinctness of her round and regular handwriting an indication of the peculiar character of her genius, which delights in grace and repose, in forms of delicacy and finished elegance.

There are in the writings of Mrs. Welby few indications of creative power; she walks the Temple of the Muses with no children of the imagination; but her fancy is lively, discriminating, and informed by a minute and intelligent observation of nature, and she has introduced into poetry some new and beautiful imagery. Her sentiment has the relation to passion which her fancy sustains to the imagination. No painful experience has tried her heart's full energies; but her feelings are natural and genuine; and we are sure of the presence of a womanly spirit, reverencing the sanctities and immunities of life, and sympathizing with whatever addresses the sense of beauty.

While its light sparkling waves, stealing laughingly o'er,

When they saw the fair rainbow. knelt down on the

shore.

No sweet hymn ascended, no murmur of prayer,
Yet I felt that the spirit of worship was there,
And bent my young head, in devotion and love,
'Neath the form of the angel that floated above.
How wide was the sweep of its beautiful wings!
How boundless its circle, how radiant its rings!
If I looked on the sky, 't was suspended in air;
If I looked on the ocean, the rainbow was there;
Thus forming a girdle, as briliant and whole
As the thoughts of the rainbow, that circled my soul
Like the wing of the Deity, calmly unfurled.
It bent from the cloud and encircled the world.
There are moments, I think, when the spirit receives
Whole volumes of thought on its unwritten leaves,
When the folds of the neart in a moment unclose
Like the innermost leaves from the heart of a rose,

And thus, when the rainbow had passed from the sky,
The thoughts it awoke were too deep to pass by;
It left my full soul, like the wing of a dove,
All fluttering with pleasure and fluttering with love.
I know that each moment of rapture or pain
But shortens the links in life's mystical chain;
I know that my form, like that bow from the wave,
Must pass from the earth, and lie cold in the grave;
Yet oh! when Death's shadows my bosom encloud,
When I shrink at the thought of the coffin and shroud,
May Hope, like the rainbow, my spirit enfold
In her beautiful pinions of purple and gold!

PULPIT ELOQUENCE.

THE day was declining: the breeze in its g'ee
Had left the fair blossoms to sing on the sea,
As the sun in its gorgeousness, radiant and still,
Dropped down like a gem from the brow of the hill;
One tremulous star, in the glory of June,
Came out with a smile and sat down by the Noon,
Asshe graced her blue throne with the pride of a queen,
The smiles of her loveliness gladdening the scene.
The scene was enchanting! in distance away
Rolled the foam-crested waves of the Chesapeake bay,
While bathed in the moonlight the village was seen,
With the church in the distance that stood on the
green,

The soft-sloping meadows lay brightly unrolled
With their mantles of verdure and blossoms of gold,
And the earth in her beauty, forgetting to grieve,
Lay asleep in her bloom on the bosom of eve.
A light-hearted child, I had wandered away [day;
From the spot where my footsteps had gambolled all
And free as a bird's was the song of my soul,
As I heard the wild waters exultingly roll,
While, lightening my heart as I sported along
With bursts of low laughter and snatches of song,
I struck in the pathway half worn o'er the sod
By the feet that went up to the worship of God.
As I traced its green windings, a murmur of prayer
With the hymn of the worshippers rose on the air,
And, drawn by the links of its sweetness along,
I stood unobserved in the midst of the throng:
For a while my young spirit still wandered about
With the birds and the winds that were singing
without,

But birds, waves, and zephyrs, were quickly forgot
In one angel-like being that brightened the spot.
In stature majestic, apart from the throng
He stood in his beauty, the theme of my song!
His cheek pale with fervor-the blue orbs above
Lit up with the splendors of youth and of love;
Yet the heart-glowing raptures, that beamed from

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Not alone on the ear his wild eloquence stole:
Enforced by each gesture it sank to the soul,
Till it seemed that an angel had brightened the sod
And brought to each bosom a message from God.
He spoke of the Savior: what pictures he drew.
The scene of his sufferings rose clear on my view,
The cross, the rude cross where he suffered and died,
The gush of bright crimson that flowed from his side,
The cup of his sorrows, the wormwood and gall,
The darknoss that mantled the earth as a pall,
The garland of thorns, and the demon-like crews,
Who knelt as they scoffed him-" Hail, King of
the Jews!"

He spake, and it seemed that his statue-like form
Expanded and glowed as his spirit grew warm—
His tone so impassioned, so melting his air,
As, touched with compassion, he ended in prayer,
His hands clasped above him, his blue orbs upthrown,
Still pleading for sins that were never his own,
While that mouth, where such sweetness ineffable
clung,

Still spoke, though expression had died on his tongue.
O God! what emotions the speaker awoke!
A mortal he seemed-yet a deity spoke;
A man-yet so far from humanity riven!
On earth-yet so closely connected with heaven!
How oft in my fancy I've pictured him there,
As he stood in that triumph of passion and prayer,
With his eyes closed in rapture, their transientec ipse
Made bright by the smiles that illumined his lips.
There's a charm in delivery, a magical art,
That thrills, like a kiss, from the lip to the heart;
"Tis the glance, the expression, the well-chosen word,
By whose magic the depths of the spirit are stirred;
The smile, the mute gesture, the soul-starting pause,
The eye's sweet expression, that melts while it awes,
The lip's soft persuasion-its musical tone-
Oh such was the charm of that eloquent one!
The time is long past, yet how clearly defined
That bay, church, and village, float up on my mind!
I see amid azure the moon in her pride,
With the sweet little trembler that sat by her side;
I hear the blue waves, as she wanders along,
Leap up in their gladness and sing her a song,
And I tread in the pathway half worn o'er the sod
By the feet that went up to the worship of God.
The time is long past, yet what visions I see!
The past, the dim past, is the present to me; [throng:
I am standing once more mid that heart-stricker.
A vision floats up-'tis the theme of my song-
All glorious and bright as a spirit of air,
The light like a halo encircling his hair;
As I catch the same accents of sweetness and love,
He whispers of Jesus, and points us above.
How sweet to my heart is the picture I've traced'
Its chain of bright fancies seemed almost effaced,
Till Memory, the fond one, that sits in the soul,
Took up the frail links, and connected the whole:
As the dew to the blossom, the bud to the bee,
As the scent to the rose, are those memories to me;
Round the chords of my heart they have tremblingly
And the echo it gives is the song I have sung. [clung,

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