The Poem 'The Listeners' by Walter De La Mare

 

Poem

The listeners

Walter De La Mare

 

 

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveler,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor.

And a bird flew up out of the turret,                                                      5

Above the Traveler’s head:

And he smote upon the door again and second time;

Is there anybody there? He said

But no one descend to the traveler;

No head from the leaf-fringed still.                                                        10

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight                                         15

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely travelers call                                                                        20

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry

While his horses moved, cropping the dark turf,

‘Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the floor, even                                                        25

Louder and lifted his head:--

“Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word’ he said.

Never the least stair made the listeners,

Though every word he spake                                                                       30

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Aye, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,                                              35

When the plunging hoofs were gone.