O the mother’s joys! The watching, the endurance, the precious love, the anguish, the patiently yielded life.

O the joy of increase, growth, recuperation, The joy of soothing and pacifying, the joy of concord and harmony.

O to go back to the place where I was born, To hear the birds sing once more, To ramble about the house and barn and over the fields once more, And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more.

O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast, To continue and be employ’d there all my life, The briny and damp smell, the shore, the salt weeds exposed at low water, The work of fishermen, the work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher; I come with my clam-rake and spade, I come with my eel-spear, Is the tide out? I join the group of clam-diggers on the flats, I laugh and work with them, I joke at my work like a mettlesome young man; 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 no one else so well as they love to be with me, By day to work with me, and by night to sleep with me.