Great Poems

Good-Bye
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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 tossed 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 am going to my own hearth-stone,
  Bosomed 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 blackbird's roundelay,
    And vulgar feet have never trod
  A spot that is sacred to thought and Cod.

O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
   I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
    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,
  Where man in the bush with God may meet?

A printable version of this is available here.