To those who go, and those who come:
Good-by, proud world! I'm going home.

I am going to my own hearthstone,1
Bosomed in yon green hills alone;
A secret lodge 2 in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;
Where arches green the livelong day
Echo the blackbird's roundelay,3
And vulgar feet have never trod

A spot that is sacred to thought and God.

Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;4
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 5 schools, and the learned clan ;
For what are they all, in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?

4. CONCORD FIGHT.

[This hymn was composed to be sung April 19, 1836, at the completion of a monument to commemorate the fight at Concord, April 19, 1775.]

1 hearthstone. What is the figure of speech?

2 lodge, habitation.

3 roundelay: a simple rural strain which is short and lively.

4 Greece and Rome: that is, learning and power, the lore and pride of man."

5 sophist (from Greek sophos, wise), one of a class of Grecian teachers who by fallacious but plausible reasoning puzzled inquirers after truth.

6 bush, referring to the burning bush of Scripture, out of which Moses heard God calling him.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.2

The foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,3
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare

4

The shaft we raise to them and thee.

I LIKE a church; I like a cowl; 5
I love a prophet of the soul;

1 rude bridge. The pupil will find, in the historical account, that part of the Concord engagement was a brisk skirmish at the "rude bridge" over the Concord River. The house in which Emerson was born stands hard by the bridge, and his father, the village pastor, witnessed the combat from his study-windows.

2 here once

world: this couplet has had a great popularity. and is one of the most familiar of familiar quotations."

3 redeem, call back.

4 the shaft: that is, the monument.

5 cowl (from Latin cucullus, a cap or hood), a monk's hood or habit. It is used by metonymy for monk.

And on my heart monastic1 aisles

Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles:
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowléd churchman be.

Why should the vest 2 on him allure
Which I could not on me endure?

Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias 3 wrought;
Never from lips of cunning fell

The thrilling Delphic oracle;+

Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below,
The canticles of love and woe;

The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,

Wrought in a sad sincerity;

Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew;1
The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast?
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn2 each annual3 cell?
Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads?
Such and so grew these holy piles,
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,4
As the best gem upon her zone;
And Morning opes 5 with haste her lids,
To gaze upon the Pyramids;

O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
As on its friends, with kindred eye;
For, out of Thought's interior sphere,
These wonders rose to upper air;
And Nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.

1 he builded

much-quoted line.

knew, now a

4 Parthenon: the Temple of Minerva at Athens; one of the most

2 with morn. Express the idea celebrated of the Greek temples, and in your own words.

usually regarded as the most perfect

3 annual (from Latin annus, a specimen of Greek architecture. year), yearly.

5

opes, poetic form of opens.

These temples grew as grows the grass;
Art might obey, but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand

To the vast soul that o'er him planned;
And the same power that reared the shrine
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.

Ever the fiery Pentecost1

Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
And through the priest the mind inspires.
The word unto the prophet spoken,
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.
I know what say the fathers wise, -
The Book itself before me lies,
Old Chrysostom,2 best Augustine,3
And he who blent both in his line,5