Text: Charles W. Kent (notes) Robert A. Stewart (variants) (ed. J. A. Harrison), “Notes to Sonnet — Silence,” The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Vol. VII: Poems (1902), 7:201-202

[page 201, continued:]

Variations of Burton’ s from the text.

Line 1 things, (o. c.) 2 life, (life —) 2 which thus is (aptly made,) 5 Silence (n. i.) 7 ; some (. Some) 9 terrorless: (—) 10 Silence: (—) 12 (untimely lot!) (— untimely lot!) 15 man,) (—) .

The Broadway Journal shows no variations from the text.

EDITOR’S NOTE.

This poem varies from the Sonnet form both in the addition of an extra line and a change in the rime order. [page 202:] The corporate silence embodied in the no more uttered in the solitude of graves is terrorless, but the shadow of silence, that is, death, has terror. — Cf. Poe's great prosepoem “Silence” (Siope), and “Eleonora.”