Bert Taylor - A line-o'-verse or two

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.”

She is hotfoot after Cultyure,
She pursues it with a club.
She breathes a heavy atmosphere
Of literary flub.
No literary shrine so far
But she is there to kneel;
But —
Her favorite line of reading
Is O. Meredith’s “Lucille.”

Of course she’s up on pictures —
Passes for a connoisseur.
On free days at the Institute
You’ll always notice her.
She qualifies approval
Of a Titian or Corot;
But —
She throws a fit of rapture
When she comes to Bouguereau.

And when you talk of music,
She is Music’s devotee.
She will tell you that Beethoven
Always makes her wish to pray;
And “dear old Bach!” His very name
She says, her ear enchants;
But —
Her favorite piece is Weber’s
“Invitation to the Dance.”

I hold it truth with him who sweetly sings —
The weekly music of the London Sphere —
That deathless tomes the living present brings:
Great literature is with us year on year.
Books of the mighty dead, whom men revere,
Remind me I can make my books sublime.
But prithee, bay my brow while I am here:
Why do we always wait for Death and Time?

Shakespeare, great spirit, beat his mighty wings,
As I beat mine, for the occasion near.
He knew, as I, the worth of present things:
Great literature is with us year on year.
Methinks I meet across the gulf his clear
And tranquil eye; his calm reflections chime
With mine: “Why do we at the present fleer?
Why do we always wait for Death and Time?”

The reading world with acclamation rings
For my last book. It led the list at Weir,
Altoona, Rahway, Painted Post, Hot Springs:
Great literature is with us year on year.
The Bookman gives me a vociferous cheer.
Howells approves! I can no higher climb.

Bring then the laurel, crown my bright career.
Why do we always wait for Death and Time?

Critics, who pastward, ever pastward peer,
Great literature is with us year on year.
Trumpet my fame while I am in my prime.
Why do we always wait for Death and Time?

Aufwiedersehen, brother mine!
Farewells will soon be kissed;
And ere you leave to breast the brine
Give me once more your fist;

That mailéd fist, clenched high in air
On many a foreign shore,
Enforcing coaling stations where
No stations were before;

That fist, which weaker nations view
As if ’twere Michael’s own,
And which appals the heathen who
Bow down to wood and stone.

But this trip no brass knuckles. Glove
That heavy mailéd hand;
Your mission now is one of Love
And Peace – you understand.

All that’s American you’ll praise;
The Yank can do no wrong.
To use his own expressive phrase,
Just “jolly him along.”

Express surprise to find, the more
Of Roosevelt you see,
How much I am like Theodore,
And Theodore like me.

I am, in fact, (this might not be
A bad thing to suggest,)
The Theodore of the East, and he
The William of the West.

And, should you get a chance, find out —
If anybody knows —
Exactly what it’s all about,
That Doctrine of Monroe’s.

That’s entre nous . My present plan
You know as well as I:
Be just as Yankee as you can;
If needs be, eat some pie.

Cut out the ’kraut, cut out Rhine wine,
Cut out the Schützenfest,
The Sängerbund, the Turnverein,
The Kommers, and the rest.

And if some fool society
“Die Wacht am Rhein” should sing,
You sing “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” —
The tune’s “God Save the King.”

To our own kindred in that land
There’s not much you need tell.
Just tell them that you saw me, and
That I was looking well.

Dear Lillian! (The “dear” one risks;
“Miss Russell” were a bit austerer) —
Do you remember Mr. Fiske’s
Dramatic Mirror

Back when – ? (But we’ll not count the years;
The way they’ve sped is most surprising.)
You were a trifle in arrears
For advertising.

I brought the bill to your address;
I was the Mirror’s bill collector —
In Thespian haunts a more or less
Familiar spectre.

On that (to me) momentous day
You dwelt amid the city’s clatter,
A few doors west of old Broadway;
The street – no matter.

But while you have forgot the debt,
And him who called in line of duty,
He never, never shall forget
Your wondrous beauty.

You were too fair for mortal speech, —
Enchanting, positively rippin’;
You were some dream, and quelque peach,
And beaucoup pippin.

Your “fight with Time” had not begun,
Nor any reason to promote it;
No beauty battles to be won.
Beauty? You wrote it!

“A bill?” you murmured in distress,
“A bill?” (I still can hear you say it.)
“A bill from Mr. Fiske? Oh, yes …
I’ll call and pay it.”