The Listeners

¹"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,

²Knocking on the moonlit door;

³And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

⁴Of the forest's ferny floor:

⁵And a bird flew up out of the turret,

⁶Above the Traveller's head:

⁷And he smote upon the door again a second time;

⁸"Is there anybody there?" he said.

⁹But no one descended to the Traveller;

¹⁰No head from the leaf-fringed sill

¹¹Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

¹²Where he stood perplexed and still.

¹³But only a host of phantom listeners

¹⁴That dwelt in the lone house then

¹⁵Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

¹⁶To that voice from the world of men:

¹⁷Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

¹⁸That goes down to the empty hall,

¹⁹Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

²⁰By the lonely Traveller's call.

²¹And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

²²Their stillness answering his cry,

²³While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

²⁴'Neath the starred and leafy sky;

²⁵For he suddenly smote on the door, even

²⁶Louder, and lifted his head:—

²⁷"Tell them I came, and no one answered,

²⁸That I kept my word," he said.

²⁹Never the least stir made the listeners,

³⁰Though every word he spake

³¹Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

³²From the one man left awake:

³³Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

³⁴And the sound of iron on stone,

³⁵And how the silence surged softly backward,

³⁶When the plunging hoofs were gone.