Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Good-Bye”
Bidding the “proud world” adieu, the speaker in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Good-bye” uses his announcement to criticize certain aspects of worldliness that he has come to disdain.
Introduction and Text of “Good-Bye”
In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Good-bye,” the speaker chides false pride and flattery of the world, as he announces his retirement from life’s vicissitudes; he plans to withdraw to his sylvan home as a hermit and contemplate the ways of God.
Good-Bye
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?
Commentary on “Good-Bye”
Announcing his retirement from worldly pursuits, the speaker engages in criticism of the various vicissitudes of the “proud world,” which he finds troubling and ultimately tiresome.
First Stanza: Leaving behind a Dreary World of Vanity and Pride
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.
The speaker in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Good-Bye” says farewell to a world of busy life, and he frames his retirement as “going home.”
This world is not a place for meditative comfort; it is not even his friend, and thus he is demonstrating that he is not a friend of the world. He has spent time for many years among these worldly crowds and finds that they make him feel weary.
The speaker likens himself to a small boat that has been tossed by the sea, as the sea tosses about its “foam.” And now he has decided to leave all that madness behind; he will no longer take part in what he deems to be a form of madness.
Thus, he has become determined to wave a simple good-bye to the “proud world.” And he is content that he will now be “going home.”
Second Stanza: Catalogue of Grievances
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.
In the second stanza, the speaker offers a list featuring many of his grievances with the world: he despises the flattery, labeling it “Flattery’s fawning face.” He disdains the “Grandeur with his wise grimace” and has no use for “upstart Wealth’s averted eye.”
The speaker is also content to be bidding farewell to “supple Office, low and high,” as he find obnoxious the halls of crowds where he has experienced bouts of business in both the street and the court.
He disdains the people with “frozen hearts” scurrying here and there. Therefore, he remains quite content as bids, “Good-bye, proud world!” and adds “I’m going home.”
Third Stanza: Choosing His Own Society
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.
The speaker employs the two last stanzas to specify and describe the opposite atmosphere, the location to which he is thankfully returning, the place where he makes his home.
He proclaims that he is withdrawing himself out of the busy, cumbersome crowds and will retire to his silvan home in the “green hills.” He will enjoy his own fireplace in his rustic setting that is far from the hustle and bustle of worldly life.
Fortunately, the speaker is already in possession of a sylvan nook that serves as his retreat. He can then easily withdraw from the laboring and toiling world that he has come to disdain. He goes on to dramatize his home as a secluded place, made pleasant by groves where “fairies” dance and frolic.
The joyful speaker then reveals his home to be a place that sounds somewhat other-worldly.
He thinks of it as paradise that seems not even to be a part of the world from which he is retiring. In this home is where nature is perpetually alive and flowing; it is where birds continually sing their merry tunes. “Vulgar feet” have not desecrated this holy ground.
He deems his home to be a place that is so splendid and unspoiled that it may be considered to remain as “sacred to thought and God.”
Fourth Stanza: A Place Where Divinity Infuses Nature
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?
In the final stanza, the speaker employs an even more spiritual tone, as he again remonstrates and adds his contempt for the overweening pride that was “Greece and Rome.” He levels his derision at “the lore and pride of man.” He offers his condemnation of both the “sophist schools and the learned clan.”
The speaker has revealed that he is no friend to the secular machinations of humankind’s proclivities. Instead, he finds the stars of evening to be holy.
He then closes by proposing a question in rhetorical fashion: what profits the human soul that has wallowed in superficialities, when God is discovered in simple, natural things?
He thus is concluding that the human soul finds God in natural surroundings and rest rather then being consumed in the fires of worldly activities.
