Impartiality - Free Audiobook

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

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 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?