Good Bye (Poem)

Good Bye (Poem)

Good bye, proud world! I'm going home:
Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine,
Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river ark on the ocean brine.
Long I've been toss'd like the driven foam;
But now, proud world! I'm going home!

Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face;
To Grandeur with his wise grimace;
To upstart Wealth's averted eye;
To supple Office, low and high;
To crowded halls, to court and street;
To frozen hearts and hasting feet;
To those who go and those who come;
Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home.

I'm going to my own hearth-stone,
Bosom'd in yon green hills alone--
A secret nook in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;
Where arches green, the livelong day,
Echo the black-bird's roundelay,
And vulgar feet have never trod
A spot that is sacred to thought and God.

O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Tome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools, and the learned clan,
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

7.1.1847