THE TYMPANUM
(A Remonstrance at a Railway Station)
The tympanum! The tympanum!
Oh! who will save the aural drum
By softening to some gentler squeak
The whistle's shrill staccato shriek?
Oh! Engine-driver, did you know
How your blast smites one like a blow,
An inward shock, a racking strain,
A knife-like thrust of poignant pain,
Whilst groping through the tunnel murk
You would not with that fiendish jerk
Let out that sudden blast of steam
Whose screaming almost makes us scream
Thy whistle weird perchance may be
A sad and sore necessity,
But cannot Law and sense combine
To—well, in short to draw the line?—
Across the open let it shrill
From moor to moor, from hill to hill,
But in the tunnel's crypt-like gloom,
The station's cramped reverberant room,
A gentler, graduated blast!
Do let it loose, whilst dashing past,
So shall it spare us many a pang;
That dread explosive bursting "bang"
Which nearly splits the aural drum,
The poor long-suffering tympanum!
