'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.
Oooohh...this one is all mysterious! Who has he come to see? Because he's clearly expecting somebody to be there, and appears to have made a pact that he would be there at or within an appointed time. Yet the pact has not been upheld - frustration, loneliness, futility.
ReplyDeleteI think it also engages a primal fear, of being alone, isolated and without protection. The traveller is on the outside, wanting/expecting to gain entry, or at least deliver something. Yet he is left standing, alone, unanswered, in the dark.
Very glad mum put us on to this one. And I also think it has to link nicely with The Raven, another one that we spoke about.
Plus if you read the Wikipedia page Walter de la Mare was an interesting character, a mystical psychologist. A bit too supernatural in his beliefs for my taste, but a nice theory on the development of human cognition.