"The Listeners" by Walter de la Mare

I first discovered this poem in primary school, when I was about ten years old. It was part of a reading comprehension exercise, where we were required to read the poem and then discuss it in a group. I don't quite know why, but something made me fall in love with it, and it's remained with me ever since. I actually still have the copy from my primary school work, which I tore out years ago, and it's been stuck on a wall wherever I happen to be living. It's above my desk right now, and it's oddly comforting to see it.

I think what attracted me was the sense of mystery within the poem; there's a story behind it, I love the language and the idea of a traveller returning home to find everything changed. The thought of the 'phantom listeners' always made makes look around extra warily if I find myself alone in a house. There's a unsettling, fairy-tale quality to the poem-it makes me think of 'Hansel and Gretel' and 'Little Red Riding-Hood', with the creepy forest and overgrown cottage.

I particularly love the last two lines: 'And how the silence surged softly backward,/ When the plunging hooves were gone'. The thought of silence 'surging' back to fill a space is so brilliantly creepy.

Anyway, here it is for a read. I like it so much that I'm going to painstakingly type it out by hand so I can remind myself of why I think it's so darn brilliant.

The Listeners.

'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.