Classic Poem

(Now happily extinct.)


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."