Praising Silence takes some nerve in a poem made of words, and Pope, who is imitating the Earl of Rochester according to the subtitle, knows exactly how funny that is. The poem begins as a grand hymn. Silence is "coeval with eternity" and reigned when "all slept fast in thee," before "fruitful Thought conceived Creation's birth, / Or midwife Word gave aid, and spoke the infant forth." Creation is imagined as a birth, and speech is the midwife who ends the quiet. Noise is therefore the intruder. Humanity arrives as "the clamorous race of busy humankind," a phrase that makes people sound like a swarm of insects.
From here the poem slides from praise into satire. Speech begins "low," but "wrangling Science" teaches it "noise and show," and "wicked Wit" appears as Silence's "most abusive foe." The poem goes on to give Silence a long list of grateful clients. Tired Reason, "oppress'd with argumental tyranny," finds "a safe retreat" there. So does Dulness, who "lurks in Thought's disguise." The line "Thou varnisher of fools, and cheat of all the wise!" is the sharpest in the poem. Varnish is a surface gloss, and a fool who keeps quiet looks like a thinker. Silence flatters the stupid and cheats the clever, who cannot tell the two apart.
The tone grows more pointed as the poem moves outward from the individual to society. Silence becomes "the knave's repute, the whore's good name." It is the one thing a scoundrel can hide behind and still seem respectable, and the joke lands in "Thy very want of tongue makes thee a kind of fame." The poem then imagines Silence silencing Church, State, Senate and Bar, but the wish is quickly soured. Even there, "Speech even there submissively withdraws / From rights of subjects, and the poor man's cause." Here Silence is no longer a gentle retreat but a form of cowardice. "Pompous Silence reigns, and stills the noisy laws" suggests that the powerful keep quiet exactly when justice needs a voice. The same is true of "past services of friends, good deeds of foes," which "fly the forgetful world."
The closing stanzas turn the compliment into an insult. The "country wit, religion of the town, / The courtier's learning, policy o' the gown" are "best by thee express'd." In other words, the best thing these people can say is nothing, because there is nothing behind their pretensions. The parson's "cant," the lawyer's "sophistry," the lord's "quibble" and the critic's "jest" all "end in thee." The poem's final words, "All rest in peace at last, and sleep eternally," read like an epitaph, so Silence shades into death.
The form helps the joke. The stanzas are triplets rhymed aaa, with two lines of ten syllables followed by a longer one of twelve. That last line, the alexandrine, stretches out and often lands on a punchline or a heavy sentiment, such as "Wisdom seeks for rest" or "shine in thee alone." The rhymes sometimes pull ideas together neatly ("free," "thee," "be"), but the repetition also gives a faintly mechanical, mock-solemn drone. The poem is one of the least silent poems imaginable, which is partly its point. Pairs like "tongue" and "tyranny," or "Wit" and "foe," keep reminding us that talk is a kind of combat.
The recurring images of sleep and rest ("slept," "lies," "bosom," "arms," "repose," "retreat") make Silence a bed that everyone, wise and foolish alike, eventually crawls into. The poem is significant because it shows how satire can hide inside admiration. Pope seems to flatter Silence while mocking human noise, vanity and cowardice, and the reader has to notice when the praise has turned into an accusation. It also leaves a more uncomfortable thought: if silence suits fools, knaves, lawyers and lords so well, it can never be a reliable sign of wisdom.