Another time in warm weather out in a boat, to lift the lobster-pots where they are sunk with heavy stones, (I know the buoys,) O the sweetness of the Fifth-month morning upon the water as I row just before sunrise toward the buoys, I pull the wicker pots up slantingly, the dark green lobsters are desperate with their claws as I take them out, I insert wooden pegs in the joints of their pincers, I go to all the places one after another, and then row back to the shore, There in a huge kettle of boiling water the lobsters shall be boil’d till their color becomes scarlet.

Another time mackerel-taking, Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill the water for miles; Another time fishing for rock-fish in Chesapeake Bay, I one of the brown-faced crew; Another time trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with braced body, My left foot is on the gunwale, my right arm throws far out the coils of slender rope, In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my companions.

O boating on the rivers, The voyage down the St. Lawrence, the superb scenery, the steamers, The ships sailing, the Thousand Islands, the occasional timber-raft and the raftsmen with long-reaching sweep-oars, The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they cook supper at evening.

(O something pernicious and dread! Something far away from a puny and pious life! Something unproved! something in a trance! Something escaped from the anchorage and driving free.)

O to work in mines, or forging iron, Foundry casting, the foundry itself, the rude high roof, the ample and shadow’d space, The furnace, the hot liquid pour’d out and running.