lethe

The personification of oblivion, daughter of Eris.

The river which flows through Hades from which the souls of the dead drank so that they would forget their time on Earth.

No wonder these mortal Folks have so many Complaints, […] if they were dead now, and to be settled here for ever, they'd be damn'd before they'd make such a Rout come over—“But care, I suppose, is thirsty; and till they have drench’d themselves with Lethe, there will be no quiet among ’em” however, I’ll e’en to work; and so, friend Æsop, and brother Mercury, good bye to ye.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains / My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, / Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains / One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

Forgetfulness of the past; oblivion.

So in the Lethe of thy angry ſoule, Thou drowne the ſad remembrance of thoſe wrongs, Which thou ſuppoſest I haue done to thee.

Dissimulation.

Till that the conquering Wine hath ſteep't our ſenſe, In ſoft and delicate Lethe.

What does it mean to say that the stream of silence originates in lethe? It means, above all, that the stream has its source (Quelle) in that which has not yet been said and which must remain unsaid: the "unsaid."

Death.

Pardon me Iulius, here was't thou bay'd braue Hart, Heere did'ſt thou fall, and heere thy Hunters ſtand Sign'd in thy Spoyle, and Crimſon'd in thy Lethee.