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 be _read_. 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.