Walter de la Mare's "The Listeners"

LINDA SUE GRIMES • UPDATED: OCT 13, 2023 2:53 AM EDT

Introduction with Excerpt from "The Listeners"

The poem "The Listeners" is Walter de la Mare’s most famous work. It might be considered an innovative ballad.

Interestingly, Walter de la Mare's "The Listeners" has attracted the attention of a wide range of readers, including
Robert Frost, who admired the poem for its "curious double metre."

The famous novelist and poet Thomas Hardy said about this poem, "'The Listeners' is possibly the finest poem of
the century."

Hardy’s widow reported that toward the end of Hardy's life, her husband would become weary listening to prose, but
he would have her read "The Listeners" to him in the middle of the night.
Excerpt from "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.

To read the entire poem, please visit "The Listeners" at Poetry Foundation.

Commentary on "The Listeners"

According to Thomas Hardy, one of England's finest and most noted poets/novelists, Walter de la Mare's mysterious
poem "The Listeners" remains the finest poem of the twentieth century.

First Movement: Knocking at the Door

‘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:

The first movement paints the scene with a man knocking at the door of a house in the forest. Nighttime has
gathered. His horse munches at the "grasses / Of the forest's ferny floor."

The only identification of the man who knocks is "the Traveller" all throughout the entire poem.

Second Movement: Knocking and Calling Out

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.

As the "traveller" continues to knock at the door, while also calling out, his noise frightens a bird that then flies "out
of the turret."

That the house was fixed with a "turret" suggests that the dwelling is not simply a small cabin in the woods. The
man then knocks at the door again, while continuing to call out, "Is there anybody there? "
Third Movement: Waiting for a
Response
Recommended
The man continues to stand still and to wait for a The Difference Between
response to his rapping at the door, but no one Green and Hazel Eyes
comes to answer.

No one ever comes to the door, and no one even looks out of the window to see who might be rapping. If anyone
had peeped out at the traveler, that person might have noticed that the traveler had "grey eyes. "

Fourth Movement: Listening Ghosts?

The narrator of this mysterious incident permits his audience a brief glimpse behind the closed door, thus seeing
what the traveler cannot. The audience thus comprehends the scene, in which it is only the ghost "listeners" behind
that door who are standing and listening in the quiet moonlight.

The listeners do not seem to be flesh and blood human beings, but instead they seem to be mere ghosts who
simply exist as they listen to human voices from the human world.

Fifth Movement: Listeners Still Standing

The listeners are still standing in the fifth movement; they remain standing in the light of the moon as it bean into
the stairway.

The stairway leads to a hallway which remains "empty." Therefore, the phantoms stand on the stairway listening as
the traveler’s knocking and calling out disrupts the silence that reigns in the empty hall.

Sixth Movement: A Sense of Strangeness

The traveler seems to sense the "strangeness " of those ghost-like presences within the house through the
"stillness" that is "answering his cry." The only sound that the traveler can hear is his horse as the animal continues
to champ at the grass, "cropping the dark turf. "

Above him, the traveler can see the stars and leaves on the trees, shading the mysterious house in the dense forest.

Seventh Movement: A Puzzling Promise

Suddenly, some movement startles, as the traveller bangs on the door one last time, this time even harder than
before. Then the traveler utters a strange message: "Tell them I came, and no one answered, / That I kept my word."

Part of the puzzle is resolved: the traveler has promised someone he could come, and he did. But still a puzzle
remains: to whom did he make the promise and for what reason?
Eighth Movement: Still Standing, Still Listening

The phantom "listeners" continue to remain still and silent, never speaking. even though they surely have heard the
words of the traveler. The words therefore seemed to fall on deaf ears as they reverberate through the shadows of
the "still house.

Ninth Movement: What the Listeners Hear

The traveler finally climbs back upon his horse and rides off, but the scene of the traveler leaving is unveiled only
through what the listeners hear: they hear him put his foot in the stirrup; they hear the clanking of the horseshoes
upon the stony ground, and finally, they hear the horse’s hooves speed up to a gallop.

And then the listeners still stand, hear nothing, except perhaps the at quietude they experienced seem to move
"softly backward." The listeners are left standing on the stairway in the moonlight, and no one ever knows why. The
mystery continues.

This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and
individualized advice from a qualified professional.

© 2023 Linda Sue Grimes