(_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!
* * * * *
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