"The Listeners"

By Walter De La Mare

This, as I've said, was my favourite poem when I was young. There's a certain magical quality to it, especially to the child I was at the time.
It's nicely crafted, with some great sound effects which have to be heard to to be appreciated properly, IMHO.
So, you must read this poem aloud, - and it doesn't matter if the people in your home / office / school / library look sideways at you, just tell 'em Melmoth told you to do it. :)

Here it is.


The Listeners

"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.


Impressed ? You certainly should be. But if you don't like this then you've no taste and I suggest you go off and read Wordsworth's "The Daffodils" or some other such drivel

Go to Melmoth's Poetry Page


Page last updated 2nd April, '98.