Silence has inspired, daunted, comforted and terrified writers throughout the long course of English literature. One of the earliest English poems, The Wanderer, composed in the language of the Anglo-Saxons, communicates the sheer strangeness of silence via an alien grey seascape in which the protagonist is utterly alone. This silence is composed not of complete noiselessness, for the hail beats on the waves and a seabird occasionally mews, but of an intense and total absence of human voices.