Classic Poem

Twas in a vault beneath the street,
In the trench of the traction rope,
That I found a guy with a fishy eye
And a think tank filled with dope.

His hair was matted, his face was black,
And matted and black was he;
And I heard this wight in the vault recite,
“In a singular minor key”

“Oh, I am the guy with the fishy eye
And the think tank filled with dope.
My work is to watch the beautiful botch
That's known as the Clark Street Rope.

I pipes my eye as the rope goes by
For every danger spot.
If I spies one out I gives a shout,
And we puts in another knot.

Them knots is all like brothers to me,
And I loves 'em, one and all.”
The muddy guy with the fishy eye
A muddy tear let fall.

There goes a knot we tied last week,
There's one what we tied to-day;
And there's a patch was hard to reach,
And caused six hours' delay.

“Two hundred seventy-nine, all told,
And I knows their history;
And I'm most attached to a break we patched
In the winter of 'eighty-three.

“For every time that knot comes round
It sings out, ‘Howdy, Bill!
We'll walk 'em home to-night, old man,
From here to the Ferris Wheel.

“‘We'll walk 'em in the rush hours, Bill,
A swearing company,
As we've walked 'em, Bill, since I was tied,
In the winter of ‘eighty-three.’”

The muddy guy with the fishy eye
Let fall another tear.
“Them knots is wife and child to me;
I've known 'em forty year.

“For I am the guy with the fishy eye
And the think tank filled with dope,
Whose work is to watch the lovely botch
That's known as the Clark Street Rope.”