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 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?
The Bard on the Hill 
Thank you for this brother… I loved visiting it again!
🙂 Thanks! Glad you happened by to read.
It always troubles me to see someone like Emmerson express his demise in positive terms — as if he is sure of going to a “better place.” From all I have studied of his life and teaching, he never totally embraced the true Christian faith (although he was a preacher) and moved farther and farther away from it as he grew older — embracing so much Eastern religious philosophy and developing his “Universal Mind” theory — relegating Jesus to nothing but a great teacher. It makes me sad to think that he was so deceived and could very well have entered into a horrible eternity that he never even believed existed. His words paint a positive and peaceful picture and include the term “God,” but what he’s actually saying is that he’s going to a place where he will be one with the “Universal Soul,” and that doesn’t exist. He had an amazing intellect, and his writing – in poetry and prose – is powerful and beautiful, but I always find it sad because of knowing his beliefs were based on spiritual deception.
Yes, there are unfortunately many like that and the types of deception are many. 😦
You have said something noteworthy here, which rarely gets said about the Transcendentalists.
Yes, they were spiritual . . . yes, they were free-thinking poets. But were they SAVED?