Tall, and bent in the meeting brows; swarthy of hair and face; Shoulders parting square, but set with the future huntsman’s grace; Eyes alive with a fire which yet the old man’s visage wore At times, like the flash of a thunder-cloud when the storm is almost o’er. 3. Toward the mettled stripling, then, the heart of the old man yearned; And thus—while Hermann Van Ghelt once more, with a restless hunger, turned From the grave of her who died so young, to his books and lawyer’s gown, And the ceaseless clangor of mind with mind in the close and wrangling town— They two, the boy and the grandsire, lived at the manor-house, and grew, The one to all manly arts apace, the other a youth anew— Pleased with the boy’s free spirit, and teaching him, step by step, to wield The mastery over living things, and the craft of flood and field. Apt, indeed, was the scholar; and born with a subtle art to gain The love of all dumb creatures at will; now lifting himself, by the mane, Over the neck of the three-year colt, for a random bareback ride, Now chasing the waves on the rifted beach at the turn of the evening tide. Proud, in sooth, was the master: the youngster, he oft and roundly swore, Was fit for the life a gentleman led in the lusty days of yore! And he took the boy wherever he drove,—to a county fair or race; Gave him the reins and watched him guide the span at a spanking pace; Taught him the sportsman’s keen delight: to swallow the air of morn, And start the whistling quail that hides and feeds in the dewy corn; Or in clear November underwoods to bag the squirrels, and flush The brown-winged, mottled partridge a-whir from her nest in the tangled brush; Taught him the golden harvest laws, and the signs of sun and shower, And the thousand beautiful secret ways of graft and fruit and flower; Set him straight in his saddle, and cheered him galloping over the sand; Sailed with him to the fishing-shoals and placed the helm in his hand. Often the yacht, with all sail spread, was steered by the fearless twain Around the beacon of Sandy Hook, and out in the open main; Till the great sea-surges rolling in, as south-by-east they wore, Lifted the bows of the dancing craft, and the buoyant hearts she bore. But in dreamy hours, which young men know, Hugh loved with the tide to float Far up the deep, dark-channeled creeks, alone in his two-oared boat; While a fiery woven tapestry o’erhung the waters low, The warp of the frosted chestnut, the woof with maple and birch aglow; Picking the grapes which dangled down; or watching the autumn skies, The osprey’s slow imperial swoop, the scrawny heron’s rise; Nursing a longing for larger life than circled a rural home, An instinct of leadership within, and of action yet to come.