Look What You Did, Christopher! Poem by Ogden Nash

Look What You Did, Christopher!

Rating: 3.5


In fourteen hundred and ninety-two,
Someone sailed the ocean blue.
Somebody borrowed the fare in Spain
For a business trip on the bounding main,
And to prove to the people, by actual test,
You could get to the East by sailing West.
Somebody said, Sail on! Sail on!
And studied China and China's lingo,
And cried from the bow, There's China now!
And promptly bumped into San Domingo.
Somebody murmured, Oh dear, oh dear!
I've discovered the Western Hemisphere.

And that, you may think, my friends, was that.
But it wasn't. Not by a fireman's hat.
Well enough wasn't left alone,
And Columbus was only a cornerstone.
There came the Spaniards,
There came the Greeks,
There came the Pilgrims in leather breeks.
There came the Dutch,
And the Poles and Swedes,
The Persians, too,
And perhaps the Medes,
The Letts, the Lapps, and the Lithuanians,
Regal Russians, and ripe Roumanians.
There came the French
And there came the Finns,
And the Japanese
With their formal grins.
The Tartars came,
And the Terrible Turks -
In a word, humanity shot the works.
And the country that should have been Cathay
Decided to be
The U.S.A.

And that, you may think, my friends, was that.
But it wasn't. Not by a fireman's hat.
Christopher C. was the cornerstone,
And well enough wasn't left alone.
For those who followed
When he was through,
They burned to discover something, too.
Somebody, bored with rural scenery,
Went to work and invented machinery,
While a couple of other mental giants
Got together
And thought up Science.
Platinum blondes
(They were once peroxide),
Peruvian bonds
And carbon monoxide,
Tax evaders
And Vitamin A,
Vice crusaders,
And tattletale gray -
These, with many another phobia,
We owe to that famous Twelfth of Octobia.
O misery, misery, mumble and moan!
Someone invented the telephone,
And interrupted a nation's slumbers,
Ringing wrong but similar numbers.
Someone devised the silver screen
And the intimate Hollywood magazine,
And life is a Hades
Of clicking cameras,
And foreign ladies
Behaving amorous.
Gags have erased
Amusing dialog,
As gas has replaced
The crackling firelog.
All that glitters is sold as gold,
And our daily diet grows odder and odder,
And breakfast foods are dusty and cold -
It's a wise child
That knows its fodder.
Someone invented the automobile,
And good Americans took the wheel
To view American rivers and rills
And justly famous forests and hills -
But someone equally enterprising
Had invented billboard advertising.
You linger at home
In dark despair,
And wistfully try the electric air.
You hope against hope for a quiz imperial,
And what do they give you?
A doctor serial.
Oh, Columbus was only a cornerstone,
And well enough wasn't left alone,
For the Inquisition was less tyrannical
Than the iron rules of an age mechanical,
Which, because of an error in '92,
Are clamped like corsets on me and you,
While Children of Nature we'd be today
If San Domingo
Had been Cathay.

And that, you may think, my friends, is that.
But it isn't - not by a fireman's hat.
The American people,
With grins jocose,
Always survive the fatal dose.
And though our systems are slightly wobbly,
We'll fool the doctor this time, probly.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Kim Barney 23 August 2015

Very humorous, as are all of Nash's poems. I like his shorter ones better, like this one called 'The Purist': I give you now Professor Twist, A conscientious scientist, Trustees exclaimed, 'He never bungles! ' And sent him off to distant jungles. Camped on a tropic riverside, One day he missed his loving bride. She had, the guide informed him later, Been eaten by an alligator. Professor Twist could not but smile. 'You mean', he said, 'a crocodile'.

3 0 Reply
Ramesh T A 23 August 2015

History of maritime journey and a detailed development of America after Christopher Columbus tried to discovered not an Eastern country but America are nicely expressed in this history poem!

2 0 Reply
Savita Tyagi 23 August 2015

Enjoyed looking back at American History through time. The rhyming made it very interesting and a pleasure to read.

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* Sunprincess * 23 August 2015

....most interesting, was like a history lesson ★

1 0 Reply
Meitha Soekotjo 03 April 2016

I love this poem. It just brought me to some scenario of History. Which's explained in beautiful and lively way. There's not much Poet could make smiles by giving long explanation with some perspectives. I could read this poem again and again, still ended it with big smile, like having a new discovery. Thanks for the poem! [3

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nathan guerra 16 November 2020

i like how the poem describes the different circumstances that happened in Christopher Columbus journey to prove the world is round.

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nathan guerra 16 November 2020

I like how the poem describes the different circumstances that happened in Christopher journey to prove the world is round.

0 0 Reply
nathan guerra 16 November 2020

I like how the poem describers the different circumstance that happened in Christopher's journey to prove the world is round.

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Jocelyne Chavez 11 September 2020

Very good detailing in the poem to understand.

0 0 Reply
starr 09 September 2020

I like the fact that this poem talks about what Christopher did and i was able to understand the details.

0 0 Reply
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Ogden Nash

Ogden Nash

New York / United States
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