Poems

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,—
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?