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I laugh and work with them—I joke at my work,
like a mettlesome young man.

17.In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel
out on foot on the ice—I have a small axe to cut
holes in the ice;
Behold me, well-clothed, going gayly, or returning in
the afternoon—my brood of tough boys accompanying
me.
My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love
to be with none else so well as they love to be
with me,
By day to work with me, and by night to sleep with
me.

18.Or, 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 boiled till their color becomes scarlet.

19.Or, another time, mackerel-taking,
Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they
seem to fill the water for miles;