I wanted some poetry in my life and I turned to one of my usual sources. I was in for a treat.
It was a poem that I had never heard about, and by a poet whose name is new to me. Uncovering my ignorance is a humbling experience every single day. When there is very little that any one of us knows, how could one ever be arrogant enough to exclaim "I alone can fix it" is beyond me!
Walter de la Mare. Perhaps you know that name. I hadn't until I visited this site for a dose of poetry.
I pulled up his poem so that I could read the words as the voice read aloud The Listeners.
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.
If I didn't know anything about the poet, which I didn't until I looked up his entry in Wikipedia, I would have easily thought that this was a poem that had a great deal of subtext. After reading about de la Mare, I can't but help wonder if it was intended as nothing but a poem for kids to enjoy getting scared about in the night as their parents or grandparents recited the lines.
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered, | That I kept my word,’
That's the best most of us can do day in and day out.
