Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/320

300 [The trend of the thought will be better understood if you call the selection "Desolation and Silence," for the fable is a dirge of noisy desolation succeeded by brooding and illimitable silence. As "the curse of tumult" marks the culmination of desolation, so "the curse of silence" heralds the coming of unbroken stillness. A phrase from The Coliseum, "Silence! And Desolation!", contains the stepping-stones of the fable, though in reversed order. The introduction of a single character "in the toga of old Rome" shows that Poe, as in The Coliseum, was thinking of desolation and silence against the background of Rome that was. He pictures here, however, not "the grandeur that was Rome" nor Roman memories.

The theme now is "the abomination of desolation" (Matthew 24:15). Ruin, in other words, is etched not as we see it through enhancing centuries of retrospect but "as an incubus upon our hearts, and a shadow upon our brain." The lynx mentioned in the last sentence is not a part of the Demon's story: he is a symbol of the persistent but futile questioning with which humanity has always fronted the silences of history.]

"Listen to me," said the Demon, as he placed his hand upon my head. "The region of which I speak is a dreary region in Libya, by the borders of the river Zaire. And there is no quiet there, nor silence.

"The waters of the river have a saffron and sickly hue; and they flow not onward to the sea, but palpitate forever and forever beneath the red eye of the sun with a tumultuous and convulsive motion. For