O the 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.

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 ’oints 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.