Volume 93 — THE TYMPANUM.

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!