"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.
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Comments
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A promise made and kept!
"...kept my word." -
Awesome!
Why am I reminded about certain website forums where one makes a brilliant post and no one responds?
Charley Noble -
Whoah! awesome! (thats all I can say)
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The Listeners?
This seems the kind of poem where any one explanation runs the risk of spoiling it. Instead, we have a mystery to mull over.
Charley Noble -
Goose bumps
A beautiful.otherworldly poem..I think it's about ghosts who live in the house,hears the traveller ,but cannot touch the living being or let him know they are there.The traveller felt their presence,sensed their knowing of him.I don't know just who he was coming to see but all were there were ghosts...a shiver down my back as I read it and loved it ,but I love this poet anyway. -
Possible inspiration for The Listeners
From guest Timo A (contact)
If this is the poem that we studied in school (1964) and it sure has that feeling... our teacher said the the inspiration came from a school reunion that the author attended but no-one showed up but him. -
story before poem?
From guest nip (contact)
i think that there are only ten people left on earth and one of them(the traveller) gets thrown out because he did sumthing and when he had completed the mission he promised to return but before he came back the waiting died so when they tried to travel to the spirit world no one ( another spirit) stopped themand made them wait for the traveller to return and when hid did no one answered and the spirits were set free. -
poem
From guest Sarah A. (contact)
i Just like this poem Means that you have to keep your word to your Family -
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The Message
From guest Richard Mitchell (contact)
The message is that you should always fulfill your promises to those you left behind, even if they are no longer living. They may be listening. The relationships between people are not over until all are dead. -
story?
From guest natelie (contact)
i have not got a clue what this poem is about but i need to write a story about what happened before the poem.?? any ideas! so far i got that a traveller comes to the castle and helps in a robbery his mates kill the family and he has to go back for something else, then he comes back and thats where the poem comes in!! RUBBISH!! please help if can!! ta
(This poem's a wonderful mystery but you've got homework to do! Consider reading the nine other comments about this poem - MOD) -
the poem
From guest Mayank (contact)
i would like to interprete this as God (visitor) calling on man (deaf, dumb trash, the old house), the horse being the angels/messiahs (buddha, krishna, jesus, mohammed etc.as you will) God knocks repeatedly (the postman always rings twice, remember ?
) and finally leaves... maybe this signifies what befalls us when god leaves us - or rather when leave god's ways... we remain trash.
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the message
From guest Andrew (contact)
The poem is about "honour in the world". It is about us and about what has happened to society. Those people without honor and purpose are the listeners and those people with honor and purpose in life are called "the lonely traveller". What De la Mare is saying is that if you have honor and purpose in life you scare people and you will be lonely. As much as you try to wake 'the listeners' you will not be able to because we live in a 'thin' age, an age without great purpose or meaning and people who are 'whole' like the traveller will find themselves pilgrims in a strange wraithlike land. Think Martin Luther King, Mandela, Jesus Christ and other 'men of honor' or 'men of purspose' and you will get the meaning of the poem. -
what's the message? i dont know!
From guest anonymous (contact)
I like this poem . found it in school. but could not understand the meaning, well neither could my dad. this is a great poem but i would like to know the the meaning, the message.
MOD MESSAGE
Please read through all the comments underneath this one! -
Great for learning English
From guest John Estra (contact)
I always thought this poem was great for learning because it's so evocative and full of great descriptions -
comment
From guest mohammed (contact)
i think the poet has another intention from that poem all i could think about the poem is that the poet is talking about the war of the two great war -
the travellers
From guest ruth (contact)
i am 41 yrs old and have fond memories of my mother reciting this to me as a young child - she died when i was 14 years old and i have never forgotten it and spent many a year looking for it. i am going to make sure my 4 kids know it too. -
poem
From guest marie (contact)
this is a very msterious poem sometimes taken in the wrong way of spook. this poem shows responsibility as he kept his word and came back too bad that no one came to recieve him inspite of here being the phantom listneres of the other realm. this poem is not at all a spook if you read it closely and understand each line and maybe even transfer yourself to the surrounding and slipping your toes into the travellers shoes -
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From guest bruce (mitcham, england) (contact)
The traveller is a knight, a man of honour. Honour is a form of vanity. The poem is moral as well as gothic. I take the moral to be the equivalent of 'Call your mum (mom). Before it's too late.' As a moral gothic poem it belongs in oldpoetry - victorian section. -
The promise to return was made so many years in the past that, now that he is able to fulfill that promise there is no one there to bear witness. that's my take on this mysterious poem. Calling out to the spirits before he leaves almost as proof of his return. Very dark and mysterious.
~Von
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Von-
A good one to periodically refresh.
Charley
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Appears that others had to memorize this poem when they were in school. Do not thinks kids have to do that often any more. Liked the flow and the rhythm and rhyme in these lines. Like to read these older poems now and again.
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Ask any carpenter
Sounds like God, knocking on the door of heaven, only from the inside out, entreating all who are without to make inquiry. Some hear, but not many takers. Why is it that you can only knock on one side of a door?
Or can we? -
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What is it about
From guest David Usaj (contact)
What is this poem about. I read it over and over again but still can't get it? -
The Answer?
Reminds me of some of the stories by Franz Kafka.
The answer would never be as satisfying as the mystery of the unanswered knock.
Charley Noble -
From guest kate (contact)
the poem is seriously touching.it is being taught in our school too.i suppose the page viewers should also have been able to see its summary. -
The Listeners
Great poem! Tell them I cama and no one answered; tell them I kept my word. Great words, very inspiring. Very important to keep one's word.
-by Hardy Parkerson - Lake Charles, LA -
The Listeners
From guest Carole Revell (contact)
I had forgotten this poem until someone on the phone said to me - Is there anybody there - when I didn't answer and it suddenly brought back to me the first two lines of this poem - I had to recite the whole poem in front of the school in the 50s when I was at Grammar School - I could see myself on the stage pretty scared at the time but I had learned it well and didn't make any mistakes! It was great to read the rest of the poem and then remember it from all those years ago - it's a great poem - it's a shame that kids aren't taught poetry the same way we were. -
From guest Floyd E. Batchelder (contact)
So, who was it that came in the poem The Listeners? It was the moment in your life when you could have done something, when you could have done the things you were sent by your genes and your family to do. That moment when your courage failed, when you took the wrong road, buster, and ended up here with the rest of us in the junk pile. That's what I think. And there is no going back. We are all doomed. Unless, of course, you vote for Obama. He offers "The Audacity of Hope." Agreed, probably a chimera, but it's the only crap game in town, Archimedes, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Mozart, dead. -
Stand on your office desk and wave your hands in the air
This poem is so easy to remember because you can picture each line as the story enfolds. 'and a bird flew up out of the turret, above the travellers head' you can see it flying away. Then he bangs on the door a second time and shouts but there's no answer.
I wonder who asked the traveller to call. He kept his word. He was a man of honour.
A terrific piece. -
darkly beautiful
I read this poem when I was in middel school, I have been looking for it for years and am so happy to have finaly found it again! The imagry in it is very stark and realistic, i agree with the last two posts that you can really picture in your mind how it all plays out. Wonderfuly written
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We acted this poem out as a play for an assembly item at school back in 1971, (in N.S.W., Australia) and the first few lines have stayed with me ever since - I could pull them up at any time, they just continued to float in my brain's recesses, but I could never remember past the 8th line - so frustrating. I finally thought to search the 'net today, and now I have goose-bumps! I will share this with my daughter - she will love it. And NOW I know who wrote it. A BIG thank you!
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I absolutely LOVE this poem!! my mom read it to me when i was little, but then i could never find it after that... and i have found it once again! yay! i love his word choice, like "champed" and "perplexed" and "spake" . I can close my eyes and just imagine the scene. A man standing outside an old delapidated house with his horse eating behind him, and his eyes are searching for some sign of life, yet silence is the only reply he gets to his calling... yet he feels that someone is listening. It also has a nice finish, one that leaves you almost satisfied... but with a twinge in the back of your brain leaving you wondering who the "phantoms" were, and why didn't they answer?
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