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good-bye. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 9 (Poems) [1909]

Edition used:

The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 12 vols. Fireside Edition (Boston and New York, 1909).

Part of: The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 12 vols. (Fireside Edition).

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good-bye.

    • 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 God.
    • 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,
    • When man in the bush with God may meet?