THE LISTENERS

Walter de la Mare published "The Listeners" in 1912, as the title poem of his
second collection of poetry. It remains one of his most famous pieces of writing,
and reflects the author's fascination with mystery and the supernatural. The
poem tells the story of an unnamed Traveller approaching an abandoned house
seemingly inhabited by ghosts, but leaves the reader's many questions as to who
these entities actually are unanswered.

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.

“The Listeners” Summary

 An unnamed figure, the Traveller, knocks on the door of a house in the

moonlight and asks if there is anyone inside. The Traveller's horse grazes in the
quiet forest while the Traveller waits for a response. A bird flies out of a small
tower on the house and over the Traveller's head. The Traveller knocks again,
more forcefully, and repeats his question. No one comes down from the house
to meet him, however. No one even leans out of the window, the sill of which is
covered in leaves, to look at him. He stands in place, puzzled by the lack of an
answer.

Inside the house is a group of ghostly beings. These "listeners" stand in the
moonlight as they listen to the human voice coming from outside. The ghostly
beings crowd around the staircase, onto which moonlight streaks, as the quiet
atmosphere in the empty house is disturbed by the sound of the Traveller's
lonely voice.

Outside, the Traveller senses a strange presence in the silence that meets his
question. His horse, undisturbed, continues to graze in the dark forest, the sky
above full of stars and obscured by trees. The Traveller suddenly beats on the
door once again, even more loudly than before. He then calls out, asking
whoever is listening to pass on a message: that no one answered him when he
came to the house, but he kept his promise.

The listeners don't make any motion in response to this. The Traveller's words
reverberate through the dark, empty house, coming from the only living person
around. The phantom listeners hear him jump up onto his horse, and then the
sound of the horseshoes on the stone path as the Traveller rides away. The
silence of the forest quickly returns as the sound of the horse's forceful riding
fades away.

“The Listeners” Themes

Mystery, Understanding, and the Unknown

“The Listeners” draws much of its eerie quality from the fact that its meaning is
rather opaque; the poem in many ways defies interpretation precisely because it
is about the unknown and the unknowable. Somewhat paradoxically, “The
Listeners” acknowledges people’s desire to seek understanding while also
asserting a certain insurmountable mystery of the world around them. In short,
the poem suggests that people cannot always find the answers they seek,
regardless of how hard they look.
The subject of the poem, the Traveller, arrives to the house in the woods clearly
in search of something (though what, exactly, is never specified). He repeatedly
knocks on the door to ask if anybody is there, and seems increasingly agitated
by the lack of response. That his second knock is described using the word
“smote” suggests a sense of urgency, his initial call having gone unanswered.
Indeed, the third time he “smote on the door, even / Louder, and lifted his head:
—"
He is further described as “perplexed,” and views the silent landscape as filled
with “strangeness.” This illustrates his confusion about the situation in which he
has found himself and reflects the air of mystery that pervades the poem in
general. The essential creepiness of the poem comes from the fact that the
Traveller—and the reader—doesn’t know what does or does not reside behind
the door, a conceit that links the unknown with anxiety and fear.
The house also is notably situated deep within a forest and suffused by the
natural world, implicitly connecting that world to the unknown. The door is
“moonlit,” for instance—under the influence of the moon, which is often linked
in literature to the supernatural. The forest floor is also “ferny,” suggesting that
no one has walked there for some time: this is a world cut off from that of
human beings. A bird flies “up out of the turret” of the house, and the house
itself has a “leaf-fringed sill,” further revealing nature’s encroachment on the
man-made structure. The connection of the mysterious house with nature, and
the Traveller’s clear inability to communicate with those within the house,
illustrates the separation of this world from “the world of men,” as the poem
calls it. This, in turn, suggests that there are certain mysteries beyond the realm
of humankind that people simply cannot access. That the Traveller declares to
the ostensibly absent house that he has “kept [his] word" suggests that, despite
holding up his end of some bargain, he is not rewarded with any
acknowledgement of his efforts. Instead, “no one answered,” and the Traveller
rides away. The poem thus concludes without leaving the reader any wiser
about who its subject is, or what he came to look for at an abandoned house in
the middle of the night. Nor does it offer the reader a sense of who resides (or
once resided) in the house. Its “conclusion,” as it were, offers no catharsis at all,
reflecting the same sense of incredibility that so disturbs its subject. People may
ask for answers as much as they like, the poem seems to say, but the mystery of
the world comes from that fact that it will not respond. It will only listen.

Isolation and Loneliness

Beyond underscoring the innate unknowability of the world, “The Listeners”

seems to reflect the existential loneliness that results from such mystery. The
poem creates a distinction between its isolated human subject, the natural world
surrounding the abandoned home, and the spirits who do not answer the
Traveller’s call.
On an immediate level, this could reflect the general isolation of human beings,
or their despair in the absence of some guiding purpose. Although de la Mare
never explained “The Listeners” explicitly, he did allegedly say before his death
that the poem is “about a man encountering a universe.” Taken allegorically, the
poem’s opening line “Is anybody there?” could be read as an echo of
humankind’s call to an absent god. Ultimately, through the poem’s evocation of
human loneliness, it suggests the indifference of the universe to people’s search
for connection and meaning.
The Traveller is distinctly human, and his physical efforts stand in contrast to
the ghostly stillness of the listeners. His attempts to make contact (speaking and
knocking) are met with a limited natural response (the bird flying up from the
turret). As a living person, he is able to make his presence known by knocking
and shouting. However, he’s aware of another presence that doesn’t respond to
these signals. On the other side of the door stand a group of phantoms—or
spirits—who hear the Traveller but cannot or choose not to answer him. The
collective immobility of the listeners heightens the Traveller’s loneliness; he is
one person, trying to make an impression on a world that absorbs his actions
without reacting.
In one sense, the poem is thus about a failure of connection. The Traveller does
not find the people he came to meet, and while the listeners are conscious of
him, they are either unable or unwilling to answer his questions. The Traveller
is on an errand, which he cannot complete without the presence of the people he
expected to find. His human purpose, then, meets with an unexpected spiritual
intrusion. Instead of talking to living people, he is forced to leave a message
with ghosts.
The listeners, whoever they are, cannot or will not interact with the living,
human world. To them, the Traveller is simply a “voice from the world of
men,” a representative from the other side of mortality. This suggests a world in
which people are alone, and cannot count on one another, dead or alive, to
answer an urgent call.
Within the poem, the supernatural presences remain silent as the Traveller calls
out to them. Their “stillness” responds to his words in a way that demonstrates
their presence to him: it is the intentional silence of someone listening, not the
silence of no one being there. The poem can thus also be interpreted as
presenting a human relationship with the mysteries of religion; a human being
might imagine a god as a conversation partner that never answers, except by
motionless, ghostly presence. The Traveller’s opening question, “Is anybody
there?” reflects a human anxiety about the guiding forces of the universe, which
may hear the desperate calling of sufferers on earth but do not answer.
The Listeners—which may represent a god, or even simply the idea of guidance
or community itself—are indifferent. The Traveller’s pursuit of meaning in his
errand goes unsatisfied, as the listeners’ silence forces him to ride away with the
excuse that he “came and no one answered.” The human attempt to make
meaning, the poem suggests—reaching out into mystery for answers—meets
only a calm refusal to engage.

The opening lines of "The Listeners" introduce the poem's main character, set
the scene, and pose the question that is central to the mystery of the story. The
subject of the poem is called simply "The Traveller," which implies that his
journeying is the most important thing to know about him. He has come on
horseback from some unknown location into the scene of the poem, and
immediately makes his presence known by knocking on the door of a house and
asking if anyone is there.

The fact that the Traveller knocks on a "moonlit door" establishes the poem's
setting as a house at night, while the "ferny floor" of a forest reveals that this
house is located in a wood. The presence of ferns further suggests that the forest
has grown wild around the house, implying that it hasn't been cared for: the
inhabitants may have been absent for a while.

The Traveller's question opens the poem with a sense of urgency. If he is

knocking at a door in the middle of the night and asking if anyone is home, he
must have a compelling reason. The reader is encouraged to read on in order to
find out what his errand entails, and what kind of response he'll get.

In these lines, de la Mare uses two devices to contribute to the effect of the
woodland scene. The onomatopoeia of "champed" makes the sound of the
horse's grazing stand out vividly, in contrast with the "silence" that fills the
wood. In the next line, the alliteration of "forest's ferny floor" creates a softness
that mimics the texture of the overgrown forest.
SUMMARY:

The Listeners by Walter John de la Mare: Walter de la Mare’s ‘The Listeners’ is

a stanza-long poem with thirty-six lines. On a moonlit night, a traveller comes
on his horse and knocks at the door of a house. He demands that the door be
opened, but receives no response to his call. There is a deathly silence within
the house, and a bird flies out of the window above his head. The traveller
knocks at the door again but is once more met with silence. He stands all alone
with his horse which busies itself munching on the grass. His calls are heard by
a group of spirits which dwell in the house. But they remain silent and
motionless. Gradually, the traveller senses the eerie atmosphere and seems to
come to the realization that no one will open the door for him. He had probably
come there to fulfill a promise that he must have made to an inmate of the house
in the past. So he declares at the top of his voice: ‘Tell them I came, and no one
answered, that I kept my word.’ But his words echoed inside the silent house.
The man finally gives up and mounts his horse to leave. As his horse gallops
away into the darkness, the sound of its hooves on the stone is heard by the
inmates of the house. The poem has the theme of the supernatural and mystery.
The traveller doesn’t fully accept the existence of spirits in the house. It shows
the futility and narrow-mindedness of modern-age rationality. The poet attempts
to convey through the poem that there is a parallel world of spirits which is
invisible to human eyes and which we must be ready to accept.

1. 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.’
Silence surged softly backwards
‘Is there anybody there?’
He suddenly smote on the door even louder.

a) Who do you think ‘them’ refers to in line 1?

b) What was the word that he has kept?
c) Is there a suggestion of impatience on the part of the traveller? What
gives you this impression?
d) The poem is set in medieval times. Pick out a word and a description
that tells us so.

Answer:- a) Here, ‘them’ refers to the inmates of the house.

b) The traveller has kept a promise that he must have made to one of the
inmates in the house in the past.
c) Yes, there is a suggestion of impatience on the part of the traveller. The
gestures of the traveller that gives us the impression is that he was knocking on
the door impatiently over and over and he was continuously asking aloud if
there was anyone inside. He just wanted to fulfil his promise and leave the place
as soon as possible.
d) The poet in the poem “The Listeners” uses a lot of archaic words like
“spake” that assures us that the poem is set in medieval times. Besides the use
of archaic words, the Supernatural setting of the poem and the traveller which
closely resemble a knight who must have been returning from a long quest gives
us the impression that the ballad is set in the medieval times.

2. 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.
a) Why are the eyes of the traveller described as grey?
b) Identify two words used to give the poem an eerie atmosphere.
c) ‘voice from the world of men’. Whose voice is it? How is it significant?
d) Why was he ‘perplexed and still’?
Answer: a) The word grey is often used to describe unclarity or confusion. In
the poem “The Listeners” the poet describes the eyes of the traveller as grey as
we know nothing about the traveller except that he was at the door of the house
to keep a promise.
b) Two words used to give the poem an eerie atmosphere are “grey” and
“phantom”.
c) It is the voice of the lonely traveller. It is significant as the voice bridges two
separated worlds of the living and the dead.
d) He was “perplexed and still” because he was expecting an answer from the
inmates of the house but despite repeated calls, there was no response. He was
there to keep a promise and therefore was certain to receive an answer.

1. In the poem ‘The Listeners’, how did the traveller feel as he

repeatedly knocked on the door?

Answer: As he repeatedly knocked on the door but received no response, the

traveller sensed an eerie atmosphere and came to the realisation that no one was
going to answer the door. He was at the door all alone and as time passed, he
grew uneasy at the deathly silence and finally decided to you leave. But before
he would leave, he declared at the top of his voice: ‘Tell them I came, and no
one answered, that I kept my word.’ He was there to keep a promise and he
wanted anyone who could hear him that he had kept his promise.

2. What does the poet mean when he says the silence surged softly
backward?

Answer: The poet means that as soon as the traveller was gone with his horse,
the silence that surrounded the house and its vicinity which was disturbed by the
advance of the lonely traveller, reoccupied the place and everything fell silent
once again.

3. How does the poet describe the atmosphere in the poem ‘The
Listeners’?

Answer: The poet describes the atmosphere of the poem through a series of
eerie elements about the whole scene. The poet also keeps many a thing unclear
which only adds to the eerieness of the setting.The poet brings together two
worlds- the worlds of the living and the dead, close to each other in the poem
with the advent of the lonely traveller about whom we know nothing except that
he was there to keep a promise to the house at the dead of the night in the
middle of the woods. The poet, however, chooses to not reveal anything more
about the ghosts that inhabit the house or the traveller and his promise. All these
make the poem a very compelling read.

4. What is the poem implying about the inmates of the mansion?

Answer: The poem is implying that the inmates of the house are dead and it is
their spirits that now occupy the house. The dead are living comfortably without
any interaction with the livings and they choose to remain like this. That is why
when the traveller came to their door; they remained quiet till the traveller was
gone.

5. What message does the traveller leave because going?

Answer: Before going, the traveller leaves the message that he kept his promise
and visited the place and asked to respond but no one answered.

6. Why is the knocking on the door not answered?

Answer: The knocking on the door was not answered because there was no one
in the house except the phantoms.

7. Who do you think are the inmates of the house?

Answer: I think the inmates of the house are phantoms who once used to dwell
in it.

8. Why had the traveller gone there?

Answer: He had gone there because he had promised someone to visit the place.