boats nets lying off
off the sea-beach, quite still, boats
separate, row off
TWO boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still,
Ten fishermen waiting—they discover a thick school of moss-
bonkers—they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water,
The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to
the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers,
The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,
Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand ankle-
deep in the water, pois’d on strong legs,
The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them,
Strew’d on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the
water, the green-back’d spotted mossbonkers.
A Paumanok Picture by Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass (Boston, Thayer and Eldridge, 1860).
A Hilton Head Picture by Mike Hoffman
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