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| 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, | 5 |
| But now, proud world, I’m going home. | |
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| 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; | 10 |
| 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. | |
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| I’m going to my own hearth-stone, | 15 |
| 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, | 20 |
| And vulgar feet have never trod | |
| A spot that is sacred to thought and God. | |
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| 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, | 25 |
| 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? | 30 |
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