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By Root 16047 0

still less could he have been aware, unless informed of the fact, ­that “cliff, wilderness and solitude would be spoused in anchored nuptials to dumb apathy! “ Good Heavens — no! — nobody could have anticipated that! Now, Mr. Mathews, we put it to you as to a man of veracity — what does it all mean?

As when in times to startle and revere.

This line, of course, is an accident on the part of our author. At the time of writing it he could not have remembered

To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

Here is another accident of imitation; for seriously, we do not mean to assert that it is anything more —

I urged the dark red hunter in his quest

Of pard or panther with a gloomy zest;

And while through darkling woods they swiftly fare

Two seeming creatures of the oak-shadowed air,

I sped the game and fired the follower’s breast.

The line italicized we have seen quoted by some of our daily critics as beautiful; and so, barring the “oak-shadowed air,” it is. In the meantime Campbell, in “Gertrude of Wyoming,” has the words

— the hunter and the deer a shade.

Campbell stole the idea from our own Freneau, who has the line

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.

Stanza the seventh begins thus

The Spirit lowers and speaks — tremble ye Wild Woods!

Here it must be observed that “wild woods” is not meant for a double rhyme. If scanned on the fingers (and we presume Mr. Mathews is in the practice of scanning thus) the line is a legitimate Alexandrine. Nevertheless, it cannot beread. It is like nothing under the sun; except, perhaps, Sir Philip Sidney’s attempt at English Hexameter in his “Arcadia.” Some one or two of his verses we remember. For example —

So to the | woods Love | runs as | well as | rides to the | palace;

Neither he | bears reve | rence to a | prince nor | pity to a | beggar,

But like a | point in the | midst of a | circle is | still of a | nearness.

With the aid of an additional spondee or dactyl Mr. Mathews’ very odd verse might be scanned in the same manner, and would, in fact, be a legitimate Hexameter:

The Spi | rit lowers | and speaks | tremble ye | wild woods.

Sometimes our poet takes even a higher flight and drops a foot, or a half-foot, or, for the matter of that, a foot and a half. Here, for example, is a very singular verse to be introduced in a pentameter rhythm —

Then shone Wakondah’s dreadful eyes.

Here another —

Yon full-orbed fire shall cease to shine.

Here, again, are lines in which the rhythm demands an accent on impossible syllables.

But ah winged with what agonies and pangs. . . . .

Swiftly before me nor care I how vast. . . . .

I see visions denied to mortal eyes. . . . .

Uplifted longer in heaven’s western glow. . . . .

But these are trifles. Mr. Mathews is young and we take it for granted that he will improve. In the meantime what does he mean by spelling lose, loose, and its (the possessive pronoun) it’s — re-iterated instances of which fashions are to be found passim in “Wakondah”? What does he mean by writing