BookTalk.org

Just read this in Ciardi's book and it gave me an idea to start this thread. Love how the POV shifts in this poem. At the end, we're with the Listeners as the Traveller leaves the house.

The Listeners

BY WALTER DE LA MARE

‘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.

This is recopied from a post by Oblivion on Feb. 1, 2011 on the Top 500 Poems: 100-1

Matt Buckley (11/22/2009 9:06:00 AM)

The traveller has come to fulfil a duty. He had left something and promised to come back to it. It seems that a great time has passed. The air is still and the hall is empty (a hall that was probably filled some time ago with activity) What ever he left behind, he could now not summon. The sleeping group, could not be stirred. He has had communication with the listeners in the past - when the promise was made. The listeners are now sleeping and won't wake.

The traveller is actually searching for a lost unbridled imagination, for creativity. It is now gone, and he heads back to the logic-driven reality. One of Walter's main obsessions was with the ingenuity and vision of the child, and how over time, this is lost. In the traveller's journey to revisit or recover this way of existince, he can't stir it. He leaves and re-assures his soul that he tried ('tell them I came, and no one answered') . We often say that the soul has windows: note how the traveller peers into the window and sees nothing; no one is there to greet. Why the 'throng' no-longer responds 'perplexes' him. The listeners (the unbridled imagination) are present, but lie sleeping; discarded and left behind. There is a deathly feel, but it not the death of physical beings, these beings are not 'from the world of men'.

Interesting interpretation. I can see it as that, an attempt to reconnect with a younger version of one's self. We are so idealistic and enthusiastic when we're young. As we age, it's hard not to become cynical. Not that I'm aging or anything.

Lovely, thanks for sharing.

Here is the Halloween-themed poem I posted on the John Ciardi thread.

The Bat by Theodore Roethke •

By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an aging house.

His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.

He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light.

But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:

For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face.

Hallow-E'en, 1914

by Winifred M. Letts

"Why do you wait at your door, woman,
Alone in the night?"
"I am waiting for one who will come, stranger,
To show him a light.
He will see me afar on the road
And be glad at the sight."

"Have you no fear in your heart, woman,
To stand there alone?
There is comfort for you and kindly content
Beside the hearthstone."
But she answered, "No rest can I have
Till I welcome my own."

"Is it far he must travel to-night,
This man of your heart?"
"Strange lands that I know not and pitiless seas
Have kept us apart,
And he travels this night to his home
Without guide, without chart."

"And has he companions to cheer him?"
"Aye, many," she said.
"The candles are lighted, the hearthstones are swept,
The fires glow red.
We shall welcome them out of the night—
Our home-coming dead."

The Sleeper
by Edgar Allen Poe

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin molders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!- and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!

O, lady bright! can it be right-
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop-
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully- so fearfully-
Above the closed and fringed lid
'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,
That, o'er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come O'er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress,
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
For ever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold-
Some vault that oft has flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o'er the crested palls,
Of her grand family funerals-
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone-
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne'er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.

This is an awesome thread!

We can safely keep it going through Christmas too, since that is a time traditionally reserved for ghostly things.

I agree Geo, with a slight variation. The creepiest time of year is from Halloween to Winter Solstice, Dec 21. I'm convinced this is when the wickedest of spirits abound, the pagan spirits, and when all human fears are manifest and so its prime time for spooky poems .... I like Edgar Allen Poe because his poems are effortlessly scary ...

giselle wrote:I like Edgar Allen Poe because his poems are effortlessly scary ...

I totally agree, Giselle I absolutely adore Poe, but I guess you can tell than already by my signature...

Do you guys know this amazing poem titled "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes? Highly recommended.
The full text can be found here: http://www.potw.org/archive/potw85.html
And the gorgeous adaptation by Loreena McKennitt : http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=PL&hl=p ... 2CFM4ev-g8