Blackbird's Roundelay

I'm about to do it again; pair a painting and a poem. Can you blame me though, really? The two go together so naturally. So here's my next match-up.

J. M. W. Turner

Sun Setting over a Lake

c. 1840

Oil on canvas, 91.1 x 122.6 cm

Tate, Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Good-bye

Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home:

Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine.

Long through the weary crowds I roam;

A river-ark on the ocean brine,

Long I've been tossed like the driver 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, - 

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? 

~Ralph Waldo Emerson