Derry Journal Poetry Corner 1 : '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 out into his gray eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

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:

Aye, 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.

Read by and video filmed at Bay Road Nature Reserve in Derry, Ireland by Brendan McDaid, Derry Journal.

The poem was originally part of a collection by the London-born poet Walter de La Mare, entitled ‘The Listeners and Other Poems’. It was published by Constable & Company Ltd in 1912.

De La Mare published numerous novels and collections during his lifetime, including many works for children such as Collected Rhymes and Verses (1944); and Collected Stories for Children (1947).

His other poetic works include The Burning Glass (1945), The Traveller (1946), Inward Companion (1950), and O Lovely England (1953).

For more on the poet see: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-de-la-Mare