In 1912 Walter de la Mare published his poem The Listeners in his third volume of poetry, called The Listeners and other Poems. The poem has remained one of his most haunting and popular. It’s a poem about some unnamed traveller, riding up to an abandoned house that seems to be the haunt of ghosts or ‘listeners’. He knocks and calls, and finally departs, stating that he has kept his promise, but there are no answers to any of the questions asked within the poem. Then silence descends again. It’s a poem that reflects the poet’s fascination with the supernatural.
The Listeners by Walter de la Mare
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
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,
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 (1873 – 1956) was primarily a writer of ghost stories and psychological horror fiction. It is an eerie poem because it is so ambiguous and defies interpretation. It is about the unknowing and unknowable. Perhaps its message is that we cannot always find the answers we seek, that we will sometimes search for things we will never find.
The poem gives a wonderful sense of the natural world, with the “ferny’ forest floor, the moon shining, the bird disturbed in the turret, and the air “shaken” in a world that seems isolated and cut off from humanity. Is it about a failure of connection – man’s inability to fully communicate with others? Walter de la Mare refused to explain his famous poem although, before his death, he did state that it was “about a man encountering a universe”. I’m not sure that statement leaves us any the wiser. However, it’s a poem I’ve always loved for the sheer beauty of the words and its mysteriousness.
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Maureen Waatson
I read this poem at school in England. I admire the way the author has created the atmosphere and sense of unease.
Thank you for reminding me about this special poem.