Page 16

By Jack Joseph Smith

When the soulder they had looked to as true In their youth came back to the town dirt poor They considered it a hamper on progress. To take up with that time anew When the great come home to tramp The city as one, the field alone And the wood deep to be gone again Say hello like the sea against a single lamp But those within, and those spread Don't know the compas as the nature of things They think thoughts that tangle guts As well enough alone terms the dead When I came home thin and wild from the West They came to see me often while still at the estate But when I rolled up my sleaves to marry And begin my madness here outside of the father They lost their taste

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The page describes a homecoming in which a once-admired figure returns poor and finds that the town no longer wants what he represents.

What matters here is the change in social value. The person who was once looked to in youth becomes an embarrassment to `progress,` and the poem frames that rejection as a failure of communal memory. By the end, marriage and `madness` mark a break from inherited order, and the final line lands as a bitter verdict on the people who withdrew.

Claude

The returning soldier who comes home `dirt poor` after the town had counted on him to be their pride. The speaker overlays his own return — `thin and wild from the West` — and marks the exact moment his social standing collapsed: when he rolled up his sleeves to marry and began `my madness here outside of the father`.