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 crowded halls, to court and street; To frozen hearts and hasting feet; To those who go, and those who come; I am going to my own hearth-stone, And vulgar feet have never trod A spot that is sacred to thought and God. O, when I am safe in my sylvan home, THE RHODORA: ON BEING ASked, whencE IS THE FLOWER? In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, 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, Thou animated torrid-zone! Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, 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 With thy mellow, breezy bass. Hot midsummer's petted crone, 'weet to me thy drowsy tone |