Is anybody there ..

Walter De la Mare. 1873–

86. 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.
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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
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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
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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,
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When the plunging hoofs were gone.