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User Rating: |
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9.4
/10
(69
votes)
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"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grass
Of the forest's ferny floor;
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
"Is there anybody there?" he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
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
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 Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:--
"Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word," he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
Walter de la Mare
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Read poems about / on: horse, silence, house, dark, lonely, sky, world, star
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Comments about this poem (The Listeners
by
Walter de la Mare
) |
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comments about this poem (The Listeners by
Walter de la Mare
)
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Brian Walter
(5/17/2009 12:48:00 PM) |
I too first read this poem in English class some 45 years ago. It gave me goose bumps then and still does now. I think we identify with the traveler because we have all made promises to keep, and he/she kept their's, apparently at some effort.
But I also like Sean Hall's idea that we are the phantom listeners, at least from de la Mare's perspective, sitting in his room writing, thinking about the unseen audience. Mostly, I don't intellectulize about it too much but just let it flow through me
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Hibah Tipu
(5/5/2009 7:41:00 AM) |
this poem is the one that i really loved.it showed the other side of the world.it showed how we humans aren't alone that live but there arw ither unknown things out there. the traveller can seperate these things. he talks to the darknessas if it is his own species. he whispers to the animals as if they speak his language. It is a unique poem in its creed and i loved it.
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Sean Hall
(3/3/2009 3:22:00 PM) |
I first read this poem a couple years ago in a college english class. I loved it so much I chose to do my paper on it. One review of De La Mare's work mentioned that a lot of his work seems to suggest a larger sense of history or historical events. I got that impression from this poem. I see a castle or large manor house.When the Traveller says ' Tell them I came and no one answered, that I kept my word' it seems to imply a larger history, that he is there for a specific reason. In my paper I came to the conclusion that the poem is meant to raise questions not answer them, to create a sense of mystery, that we are not really ever supposed to know who the listeners are or who the Traveller is or why he's there, that De La Mare himself doesn't really know. But I also like the idea that we the readers are the phantom listeners. That the Traveller is speaking to us, and so the poem itself is an intersection between reality and fantasy or imagination. I have no idea if De La Mare had that in mind it was just a thought I had.
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Grace A.
(2/2/2009 9:43:00 AM) |
Beautiful, can someone recommend similar poems to this one?
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Sherrie Marker
(8/31/2008 9:07:00 AM) |
This particular poem has played with my imagination ever since I was a kid. As a child I imagined the traveller was human and alive, just like all of us. I imagined that while travelling, he found himself in front of a haunted castle.
Recently I read it again... and instead of looking at a weary 'human' traveller wandering off into ghostly realm. I began to see a ghostly traveller lost in darkness, in his search of the light. The darkness symbolized by the night. This ghostly traveller is tired and weary and by mistake he stumbles upon our realm. The worldly realm. People from our realm cant see him, can't hear him. And he can't see us. But we both sense each other's presence.
And then I read 'Some One' another poem by Walter de la Mare and I couldnt help but see a connection.
But then again, for all you know I'm just overworked and my mind is running ahead of me: -)
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Lazy Dabbler
(10/27/2007 8:24:00 PM) |
To each their own, but I am a little disappointed that this gem is not rated much much higher. I bet every one ends up reading it more than once.. for it forces you to imagine the atmosphere and the mystery.. and make your own interpretations.
Here's a tribute from T.S Eliot to De la Mare and the mystery of the nocturnal traveller...
http: //www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-walter-de-la-mare/
.......... ........
.......... ........
When the nocturnal traveller can arouse
No sleeper by his call; or when by chance
An empty face peers from an empty house;
By whom, and by what means, was this designed?
The whispered incantation which allows
Free passage to the phantoms of the mind?
By you; by those deceptive cadences
Wherewith the common measure is refined;
By conscious art practised with natural ease;
By the delicate, invisible web you wove -
The inexplicable mystery of sound.
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Michelle Garner
(6/17/2007 4:56:00 AM) |
Learned this one at school as a child, could still remember it - years later, that must be the sign of an excellent poem! ! One of my favourites
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Bryan Scott
(5/28/2007 10:38:00 PM) |
This poem is one of my favorite poems of all time. It evokes such intense feelings of purpose denied but ultimately vindicated. A masterpiece!
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Brian Dorn
(8/20/2006 2:44:00 PM) |
A brilliantly stunning depiction of fruitless effort... been there, done that (minus the horse of course) .
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