Silence
There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave--under the deep, deep, sea,
Or in wide desert where no life is found,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;
No voice is hushed--no life treads silently,
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,
That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls
Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls,
And owls, that flit continually between,
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.
Commentary
Inspired by my previous poem…
Today’s sonnet is built around an intriguing conceit - that there are two kinds of silence, that where life has never been, and that which flows back after man has come and gone.
A beautiful conceit, and beautifully developed - there’s not a whole lot it needs said about it. The use of ‘self-conscious’ at the end is unusual, though - while I’m not sure what Hood intended by it, I personally lean towards ‘self-aware’, rather than the more modern usage.
Links
We’ve run one Hood poem, which includes a biography - see poem #251
— Martin
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
sandi_ordinario · 2 May 2003
At the outset, the poet defines what he means by silence. First, silence as absence of sound and; second, “silence where no sound may be” can be interpreted as may or may not have sounds. He then gives illustrations of both. The first as “the cold grave–under the deep, deep sea…” or in wide deserts that is without life where clouds and shadows that never spoke over the idle the ground. There is essentially no audio communications in these environs.
Then to Hardy, the true silence is expressed by the absence of man, leaving behind “green ruins, desolate walls of antique palaces” and only now nature recovers from a lost culture or civilization, inhabiting these with foxes, hyenas and owls where only shrieks to echoes or the moaning of low winds are heard. It bespeaks some melancholic nostalgia of some sort.
This has the same theme as Carl Sandburg’s “Preludes on the Playthings of the Wind” which I hope should be published in this website also.
Sandi