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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=390927" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>John Smith</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">To-day I strayed in Charing Cross as wretched as could be<br>With thinking of my home and friends across the tumbling sea;<br>There was no water in my eyes, but my spirits were depressed<br>And my heart lay like a sodden, soggy doughnut in my breast.<br>This way and that streamed multitudes, that gayly passed me by--<br>Not one in all the crowd knew me and not a one knew I!<br>'Oh, for a touch of home!' I sighed; 'oh, for a friendly face!<br>Oh, for a hearty handclasp in this teeming desert place!'<br>And so, soliloquizing as a homesick creature will,<br>Incontinent, I wandered down the noisy, bustling hill<br>And drifted, automatic-like and vaguely, into Lowe's,<br>Where Fortune had in store a panacea for my woes.<br>The register was open, and there dawned upon my sight<br>A name that filled and thrilled me with a cyclone of delight--<br>The name that I shall venerate unto my dying day--<br>The proud, immortal signature: 'John Smith, U.S.A.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Wildly I clutched the register and brooded on that name--<br>I knew John Smith, yet could not well identify the same.<br>I knew him North, I knew him South, I knew him East and West--<br>I knew him all so well I knew not which I knew the best.<br>His eyes, I recollect, were gray, and black, and brown, and blue,<br>And, when he was not bald, his hair was of chameleon hue;<br>Lean, fat, tall, short, rich, poor, grave, gay, a blonde and a brunette--<br>Aha, amid this London fog, John Smith, I see you yet;<br>I see you yet, and yet the sight is all so blurred I seem<br>To see you in composite, or as in a waking dream,<br>Which are you, John? I'd like to know, that I might weave a rhyme<br>Appropriate to your character, your politics and clime;<br>So tell me, were you 'raised' or 'reared'--your pedigree confess<br>In some such treacherous ism as 'I reckon' or 'I guess';<br>Let fall your tell-tale dialect, that instantly I may<br>Identify my countryman, 'John Smith, U.S.A.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It's like as not you are the John that lived a spell ago<br>Down East, where codfish, beans 'nd bona-fide school-marms grow;<br>Where the dear old homestead nestles like among the Hampshire hills<br>And where the robin hops about the cherry boughs and trills;<br>Where Hubbard squash 'nd huckleberries grow to powerful size,<br>And everything is orthodox from preachers down to pies;<br>Where the red-wing blackbirds swing 'nd call beside the pickril pond,<br>And the crows air cawin' in the pines uv the pasture lot beyond;<br>Where folks complain uv bein' poor, because their money's lent<br>Out West on farms 'nd railroads at the rate uv ten per cent;<br>Where we ust to spark the Baker girls a-comin' home from choir,<br>Or a-settin' namin' apples round the roarin' kitchen fire:<br>Where we had to go to meetin' at least three times a week,<br>And our mothers learnt us good religious Dr. Watts to speak,<br>And where our grandmas sleep their sleep--God rest their souls, I say!<br>And God bless yours, ef you're that John, 'John Smith, U.S.A.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Or, mebbe, Colonel Smith, yo' are the gentleman I know<br>In the country whar the finest democrats 'nd horses grow;<br>Whar the ladies are all beautiful an' whar the crap of cawn<br>Is utilized for Bourbon and true dawters are bawn;<br>You've ren for jedge, and killed yore man, and bet on Proctor Knott--<br>Yore heart is full of chivalry, yore skin is full of shot;<br>And I disremember whar I've met with gentlemen so true<br>As yo' all in Kaintucky, whar blood an' grass are blue;<br>Whar a niggah with a ballot is the signal fo' a fight,<br>Whar a yaller dawg pursues the coon throughout the bammy night;<br>Whar blooms the furtive 'possum--pride an' glory of the South--<br>And Aunty makes a hoe-cake, sah, that melts within yo' mouth!<br>Whar, all night long, the mockin'-birds are warblin' in the trees<br>And black-eyed Susans nod and blink at every passing breeze,<br>Whar in a hallowed soil repose the ashes of our Clay--<br>Hyar's lookin' at yo', Colonel 'John Smith, U.S.A.'!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Or wuz you that John Smith I knew out yonder in the West--<br>That part of our republic I shall always love the best?<br>Wuz you him that went prospectin' in the spring of sixty-nine<br>In the Red Hoss mountain country for the Gosh-All-Hemlock Mine?<br>Oh, how I'd like to clasp your hand an' set down by your side<br>And talk about the good old days beyond the big divide;<br>Of the rackaboar, the snaix, the bear, the Rocky Mountain goat,<br>Of the conversazzhyony 'nd of Casey's tabble-dote,<br>And a word of them old pardners that stood by us long ago<br>(Three-Fingered Hoover, Sorry Tom and Parson Jim, you know)!<br>Old times, old friends, John Smith, would make our hearts beat high again,<br>And we'd see the snow-top mountain like we used to see 'em then;<br>The magpies would go flutterin' like strange sperrits to 'nd fro,<br>And we'd hear the pines a-singing' in the ragged gulch below;<br>And the mountain brook would loiter like upon its windin' way,<br>Ez if it waited for a child to jine it in its play.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You see, John Smith, just which you are I cannot well recall,<br>And, really, I am pleased to think you somehow must be all!<br>For when a man sojourns abroad awhile (as I have done)<br>He likes to think of all the folks he left at home as one--<br>And so they are! For well you know there's nothing in a name---<br>Our Browns, our Joneses and our Smiths are happily the same;<br>All represent the spirit of the land across the sea,<br>All stand for one high purpose in our country of the free!<br>Whether John Smith be from the South, the North, the West, the East--<br>So long as he's American, it mattereth not the least;<br>Whether his crest be badger, bear, palmetto, sword or pine,<br>He is the glory of the stars that with the stripes combine!<br>Where'er he be, whate'er his lot, he's eager to be known,<br>Not by his mortal name, but by his country's name alone!<br>And so, compatriot, I am proud you wrote your name to-day<br>Upon the register at Lowe's, 'John Smith, U.S.A.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Eugene+Field">Eugene Field</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=390927" data-title="John Smith de Eugene Field" data-description="To-day I strayed in Charing Cross as wretched as could be
With thinking of my home and friends across the tumbling sea;
There was no water in my eyes, but my spirits were depressed
And my heart lay like a sodden, soggy doughnut in my breast.
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