ABSTRACT
Actually, I believe this to be one of the great poems of the time, stretched though its imagery is, for he dares to go where few have ever gone before; it is an ‘Ode to Silence’, yet is about sound, specifically about the beauty of Arabella Hunt’s
singing, therefore paradox is built into its very essence. Neither is it the only poem by Congreve to Arabella Hunt; the second is an elegy lamenting her death, and appended to the popular print of her most famous portrait in which she is shown playing the lute:
Were there on Earth another Voice like thine, Another Hand so blest with Skill Divine! The late afflicted World some Hopes might have, And Harmony retrieve thee from the Grave.2
