Edgar Allan Poe, a nineteenth century American writer, wrote many works of poetry and fiction, which people have published numerous times for various purposes. The following poem is one that has not received much attention in as far as Internet publishing is concerned. "Silence" is the name of that poem. In order to appreciate this poem, one must understand a little about Poe.

Poe was a man obsessed with death and darkness. For this reason many of his short stories are considered to be at the roots of the horror genre and have inspired many authors to write about death and darkness. One such story is "The Tell-Tale Heart". This obsession, "shined through" in his other types of work as well, especially his poetry. One example exists in the form of one of his best-known poems, "The Raven". In this poem, one sees repetition of words such as darkness, broken, sorrow, and bleak. None of these words have happy or even remotely cheerful connotations. Their repetition leaves one with a feeling of despair and loneliness by the end of the poem.

"The Raven" is not alone as Poe’s only poem that speaks of dark feelings of despair and loneliness, far from it. Another good example of Poe’s dark side exists in "Silence". The poem itself is short for a poem by Poe. He wrote many of his poems to be long. Perhaps this is because he felt that through a shorter poem he could convey his message of darkness more concisely. The reason for his writing of this poem does not matter. All that matters is the poem’s text itself.

The initial lines give a sense of a duality in life and nature. According to lines three and four, for every light there is matter, and for every solid, there is shade. This suggests a sense of opposition between the seeming opposites. Another occurrence of this is in lines five and six as the speaker tells of "a two-fold Silence" at the "sea and shore" and within everyone’s "body and soul." With this duality of nature there also can be a singularity, as can be evidenced in line six also with the words "One dwells in lonely places".

With this singularity comes the idea of the poem not speaking about just nature in general. The poem suggests that Death is its subject. One can see this if the first few lines are re-read with an idea that death can take many forms. One of which is through the talking about a double life. This double life is one that Death himself can experience, for he leads people "body and soul" from this life to the after life, whatever that might be. Though he (Death) has the power to lead from one plane of existence to another and is silent, one need not fear him, because he has no "evil in himself". From the poem then, one should not fear death, instead one should "commend... (oneself) to God!"

As a whole, this poem shows some of Poe’s skillful word play. Instead of reading more about the poem, read it on the following page. All interpretations and opinions stated in this text are the original ideas of the author and the only references used are the source of the poem and the source for the images on the screen.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe/ in five volumes. New York: Collier & Son, 1908. v.5. p 265.

Edgar Allan Poe A Centenary Tribute. Heinrich Buchholz, ed. Baltimore: Warwick & York, Inc, 1910.

This document was originally written and spell-checked in Microsoft Word '97.
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