GOOD-BYE. GOOD-BYE, proud world! I'm going home: Long I've been tossed like the driven foam; Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face; To upstart Wealth's averted eye; To supple Office, low and high; To frozen hearts and hasting feet; I am going to my own hearth-stone, A secret nook in a pleasant land, Whose groves the frolic fairies planned; 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 laugh at the lore and the pride of man, THE RHODORA: ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER? In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, Made the black water with their beauty gay; This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose! I never thought to ask, I never knew; But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same Power that brought me there brought you. THE HUMBLE-BEE. BURLY, dozing, humble-bee, Where thou art is clime for me. Thou animated torrid-zone! Insect lover of the sun, Joy of thy dominion! Sailor of the atmosphere; Swimmer through the waves of air; Voyager of light and noon; Wait, I prithee, till I come Within earshot of thy hum, All without is martyrdom. When the south wind, in May days, With a net of shining haze Silvers the horizon wall, And, with softness touching all, Tints the human countenance With a color of romance, And, infusing subtle heats, Turns the sod to violets, Thou, in sunny solitudes, Rover of the underwoods, The green silence dost displace Hot midsummer's petted crone, |