Poem by Charles Tennyson Turner

The Hydraulic Ram, or The Influence of Sound on Mood

In the hall grounds, by evening-gloom concealed,
He heard the solitary water-ram
Beat sadly in the little wood-girt field,
So dear to both! "Ah! wretched that I am!"
He said, "And traitor to my love and hers!
Why did I vent those words of wrath and spleen,
That changed her cheek, and flushed her gentle mien?
When will they yield her back, those jealous firs,
Into whose shelter two days since she fled
From my capricious anger, phantom-fed?
When will her sire his interdict unsay?
Or must I learn a lonely lot to bear,
As this imprisoned engine, night and day,
Plies its dull pulses in the darkness there?"

1. Mary Queen of Scots
2. The Seaside: In and out of Season
3. The Sonneteer to the Sea-Shell
4. Prefatory
5. The Lattice at Sunrise

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