The hunter and the deer a shade.
Between the two, Mr. Mathews’ claim to originality, at this point, will,
very possibly, fall to the ground.
It appears to us that the author of “Wakondah” is either very innocent
or very original about matters of versification. His stanza is an
ordinary one. If we are not mistaken, it is that employed by Campbell in
his “Gertrude of Wyoming”—a favorite poem of our author’s. At all
events it is composed of pentameters whose rhymes alternate by a simple
and fixed rule. But our poet’s deviations from this rule are so many and
so unusually picturesque, that we scarcely know what to think of them.
Sometimes he introduces an Alexandrine at the close of a stanza; and
here we have no right to quarrel with him. It is not _usual_ in this
metre; but still he _may_ do it if he pleases. To put an Alexandrine in
the middle, or at the beginning, of one of these stanzas is droll, to
say no more. See stanza third, which commences with the verse
Upon his brow a garland of the woods he wears,
and stanza twenty-eight, where the last line but one is
And rivers singing all aloud tho’ still unseen.