Lone Voice
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.
Walter de la Mare 1912 (Norton Anth. 1120)
Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) lived through a lot of changes in his lifetime, given the dates that he lived - WWI, The Great Depression, WWII, to name three. In reading the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Second Edition, it is written that "his theme is the unsuccessful quest, which never reaches its goal: the integral vision he associates with childhood, or some imaginative land which can be dreamed of, or dimly apprehended, before being lost." Further, "if estrangement pervades his verse, the model of expression is a reconciliation of what he calls two voices, that of verbal sounds and of verbal symbols."
This poem, "The Listeners", leaves the Traveller's voice as an "echoing through the shadowiness of the still house". It also leaves me pondering whether it is mostly simply 'hearers' that inhabit the spaces where we too travel, and that in reality our voice goes out to "a host of phantom listeners". At the end of the poem, after he has broken the silence, the Traveller keeps moving on, and the silence "surged softly backward" filling the space where the voice had been. This makes me think about death and loss of those we have loved. When someone dies, perhaps it is the silence that has 'surged softly backward' where their voice once was, that leaves us missing them, perhaps even sometimes more than their physical presence. I think de la Mare's poem contains imagery that is easily identified with, and because of this, the words of the poem are those that pull the reader into a space of deep thought.
"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.
Walter de la Mare 1912 (Norton Anth. 1120)
Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) lived through a lot of changes in his lifetime, given the dates that he lived - WWI, The Great Depression, WWII, to name three. In reading the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Second Edition, it is written that "his theme is the unsuccessful quest, which never reaches its goal: the integral vision he associates with childhood, or some imaginative land which can be dreamed of, or dimly apprehended, before being lost." Further, "if estrangement pervades his verse, the model of expression is a reconciliation of what he calls two voices, that of verbal sounds and of verbal symbols."
This poem, "The Listeners", leaves the Traveller's voice as an "echoing through the shadowiness of the still house". It also leaves me pondering whether it is mostly simply 'hearers' that inhabit the spaces where we too travel, and that in reality our voice goes out to "a host of phantom listeners". At the end of the poem, after he has broken the silence, the Traveller keeps moving on, and the silence "surged softly backward" filling the space where the voice had been. This makes me think about death and loss of those we have loved. When someone dies, perhaps it is the silence that has 'surged softly backward' where their voice once was, that leaves us missing them, perhaps even sometimes more than their physical presence. I think de la Mare's poem contains imagery that is easily identified with, and because of this, the words of the poem are those that pull the reader into a space of deep thought.
posted by maggiesong at 9:31 PM
3 Comments:
How good to see somebody picking up on this magical poem. It was among the poems of my childhood, and I'm still just as fond of it. It has a child's sense of mystery, yet an adult can see it on another level -- a double quality shared by that great classic, Winnie-the-Pooh (the Milne/Shepard version, that is, not Disney.
Maggie:
Upon reading the few initial lines of the poem I was reminded of the Frost poem, The Road Not Taken. If you're not familiar with it then look it up because it is certainly worth the effort! At any rate, in Frost's poem we see a traveller stopping in the woods and debating his choice of routes for the remainder of his journey. de le Mare's Traveller seems to be that same traveller described by Frost since they are both pondering the mysteries of the forest and ultimately life.
I also thought that de le Mare's personifaction of the woods and the noises that inhibit them was fantastic. Easily tangible for most readers to understand and perhaps even relate to if they've travelled through the woods. The character of the Traveller is also easy to identify with, because he ponders the same things that most of us would do. Is there someone out there in the forest with me?
I also enjoyed how you once again provided some back ground information on the poet. It really helps to get into their head space to some degree. Though we'll never truly be able to enter that perfect moment when the poet wrote the poem.
sv
Once again, I'm finding myself making one comment to the thoughts of three.
It's quite interesting to read these comments because it shows three perspectives on how this poem was seen or experienced. It's so neat how words are able to have such a variety of impact once they are released to the rest of the world.
I could identify with this poem because there have been times in my life when I have been in a place alone and "stood perplexed and still" (l. 12). It's that realization that a house is just a house until it has human voice and movement within it...like a dead air space "listening in the quiet of the moonlight/To that voice from the world of men"...it always gives me an 'odd' feeling, for example, to come into another person's home if they are not there, as when sometimes you are asked to check on someone's house, or water plants when they are on vacation. If houses could talk, oh what tales they would have to tell!
Thank you all for your comments. I appreciate them.
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