Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/573

 GEORGE YOUK WELBOHN. George York Welborn was born in Mount Vernon, Indiana, April twenty- ninth, 1827. He descended from a respectable family of North Carolina, which emigrated to the West during the war of 1812. His father, Jesse York Welborn, joined the army of the South, and, after the battle of New Orleans, settled in Mount Vernon, where he long continued a worthy associate of the sturdy pioneers who im- parted vigor and manly growth to the early settlement of the West. At an early age, George entered the common school, where his rapid progress won for him the encomiums of his teacher. At the age of nineteen we find him a student in the law office of A. P. Hovey, but fearing that his education would not admit of his mastering the great principles of the legal profession, he entered the semi- nary of his native place, preparatory to a regular course in college. In 1849 he entered the freshman class of Asbury University, at Greencastle, Indiana, and at once took rank as one of the most zealous of his class, and maintained by his excellence of character and energy of purpose, the enviable position allotted to him until his death. He died while a member of the senior class, January twenty-fifth, 1853, aged twenty- five years. Had he lived to mature manhood, it is hazarding but little to say that he would have gained distinction among men. With native energy, inherent talent, and scho- lastic acquirements ; vigorous as a writer, sprightly in conversation and winning in manners ; with a cheerful disposition, and an implicit faith in the ultimate triumph of the right, he possessed elements that fitted him to win upon the world's favor. While a boy, he saw beauty in the sweet fern and wild thyme, and in manhood the way ward- ings of the butterfly were still beautiful. In boyhood he was filled with the ideal, and painted the canvas all over with radiant pictures, and when he had grown to manhood, the ideal was united with the real, and the offspring was poetry. In col- lege he was loved by his fellow-students. In their expression of condolence, they say, " we mourn the loss of a companion, friend, and brother." He was esteemed by his professors. One of them says, in a letter : " The name of George York Welborn is associated in my memory with all that is manly, and noble, and good. I distinctly remember what taste and judgment he always exhibited in rendering the Greek and Latin classics into English." Of his poetic writings we have but a single remark to make. The manuscripts from which we are permitted to make a few selections, all bear dates but little an- terior to his death, which indicate that the spirit of song had but recently come to him, and that the mantle of poesy was worthily worn. (557)