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'm 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?

About Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Emerson was born to an educated family. When he was 3 his father complained that Emerson could not read well enough. Like poet Robert Frost, Emerson's father died when he was young, leaving the family in poverty. At 14, he entered the Harvard University and graduated as an average student.

He then married his sweetheart, Ellen Tucker who died young due to tuberculosis. He left his position as a junior pastor and went to Europe. After extensive travel, he came back home and remarried. It was during this time that he founded the controversial Transcendental Club, a discussion group comprising of ministers and intellectuals.

He was controversial when proclaiming that Jesus was only a man and not God. At the same time he was also controversial when he questioned the act of slavery and promoted the abolition of the practise.

By the time his poems were published, Emerson was already a famous essayist, orator and lecturer.

During his final years, he suffered from severe memory loss and later died of pneumonia.