Thomas Hood (1799-1845)

Silence

Silence Taxonomy

Hood creates different categories of silence: lifeless, potential, and human-inflected silence. Notice how each type has different emotional weight.

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,

Geological Silence

Silence in natural, uninhabited spaces—grave, sea, desert—represents pure absence. No history, no memory.

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:

Ruined Spaces

Abandoned human spaces carry a different silence: haunted, layered with past human presence. Listen for traces of memory.

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.

Self-Conscious Silence

Final twist: true silence is not absence, but a conscious state. Silence becomes an active, sentient experience.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Romantic Meditation on Absence

Silence emerges here not as emptiness, but as a complex emotional and philosophical state. Hood, a key Romantic poet, transforms silence from a passive condition into an active, almost sentient experience.

The poem's structure moves from abstract, universal silences (graves, deserts) to specifically human landscapes. This progression suggests silence is not just an acoustic phenomenon, but a psychological and historical condition.

Poetic Technique: Layered Negation

Hood builds meaning through negative description—defining silence by what it is not. Each stanza introduces sonic possibilities (voices, winds) only to emphasize their absence.

The final line's paradox—"self-conscious and alone"—reveals the poem's true subject: silence as a form of consciousness, a meditative state that transcends mere soundlessness.