The Blue Door & 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 lonely 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 only Traveller's call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

Underneath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted hid 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