The bared and bended arm of Massachusetts

Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts:
the shoulder is at Buzzard's Bay;
the elbow, or crazy-bone, at Cape Mallebarre;
the wrist at Truro; the sandy fist at Provincetown,
behind which the State stands on her guard,
with her back to the Green Mountains,
and her feet planted on the floor of the ocean,
like an athlete protecting her Bay,
boxing with northeast storms, and, ever and anon,
heaving up her Atlantic adversary from the lap of earth,
ready to thrust forward her other fist,
which keeps guard the while upon her breast at Cape Ann.

- Henry David Thoreau in Cape Cod
(published 1865)