Listeners, The, is a poem by the British poet, novelist, and short-story writer Walter de la Mare. It was first published in the collection The Listeners and Other Poems (1912). Although de la Mare produced more than 20 volumes of verse in his lifetime, this is probably his best-known poem. In 36 richly descriptive lines, it describes the visit of an unnamed “Traveller” to a seemingly empty house.
“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.
De la Mare often created haunting and mysterious poetic atmospheres. In this poem, a series of evocative images depicts a timeless, dreamlike place with numerous symbolic possibilities. Some readers have suggested, for example, that the traveler is an emblem for humanity, trying to understand and to communicate with the environment. Others have seen his encounter with the “listeners” as a twist upon the processes of human perception. In this variation, the subject, the person who perceives the world, becomes the object, the thing perceived by other, unknown things. De la Mare was fascinated with unusual forms of sensory perception, and he experimented with imagery that blended different senses. This is shown in this poem by the depiction of “thronging moonbeams,” “stirred and shaken” air, or silence that “surge[s].”
Many readers just see “The Listeners” as a supreme example of poetic magic and mystery created through words. The richly descriptive language and the musical effect of rhythm and rhyme simply make the poem a pleasure to experience.
For more information about de la Mare, see De la Mare, Walter.
