Good-bye by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson read by Classic Poetry Aloud:\nhttp://www.classicpoetryaloud.com/\n\nGiving voice to classic poetry.\n\n---------------------------------------------------\n\nGood-bye \n\nby Ralph Waldo Emerson, (1803 \u2013 1882)\n\nGood-bye, proud world! I\u2019m going home:\nThou art not my friend, and I\u2019m not thine.\nLong through thy weary crowds I roam;\nA river-ark on the ocean brine,\nLong I\u2019ve been tossed like the driven foam;\nBut now, proud world! I\u2019m going home.\n\nGood-bye to Flattery\u2019s fawning face;\nTo Grandeur with his wise grimace;\nTo upstart Wealth\u2019s averted eye;\nTo supple Office, low and high;\nTo crowded halls, to court and street;\nTo frozen hearts and hasting feet;\nTo those who go, and those who come;\nGood-bye, proud would! I\u2019m going home.\n\nI am going to my own hearth-stone,\nBosomed in yon green hills alone\u2014\nA secret nook in a pleasant land,\nWhose groves the frolic fairies planned;\nWhere arches green, the livelong day,\nEcho the blackbird\u2019s roundelay,\nAnd vulgar feet have never trod\nA spot that is sacred to thought and God.\n\nO, when I am safe in my sylvan home,\nI tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;\nAnd when I am stretched beneath the pines,\nWhere the evening star so holy shines,\nI laugh at the lore and the pride of man,\nAt the sophist schools and the learned clan;\nFor what are they all, in their high conceit,\nWhen man in the bush with God may meet?