What is the summary and theme of "The Listeners" by Walter de la Mare?

"The Listeners" describes a traveler who has come to knock on a moonlit door in an eerie, unknown place.  He has come to keep an unnamed promise, and knocks on the door harder and harder, but gets no response.  Unbeknownst to him, a "host of phantom listeners' (line 13) are inside but unresponsive to his calls.  The traveler finally leaves, but the listeners remain.

The theme of the poem is the place of man in a universe which is far greater than he, and which he can neither connect with nor understand.  It focuses on man's state of isolation and disharmony with the natural world.  Nature, as represented by the horse placidly munching on the grass and the bird frightened by the man's disturbing clamor, is normally serene - it is only man who is anxious because of his separateness.  The traveler tries to overcome his aloneness and establish meaning by fruitless seeking (knocking) and responsible living (keeping promises), but the natural world remains unyielding in keeping its distance, and the traveler continues on alone.

Which sounds are mentioned in the poem "The Listeners"?

First, there is human speech, as the traveler stops at a door to ask if anyone is home. He also knocks on the door, another sound. The speaker of the poem refers to the "silence" that pervades the scene, except for the sound of the traveler's horse "champ[ing] the grasses" on the forest floor. The traveler knocks again and calls out once more to ask if anyone is home.

After the first eight lines, which are filled with these sounds, there are no sounds for quite some time. No one answers the traveler's call, though a number of "phantom listeners"—ghosts, I imagine—that live in the house do listen to his voice, as they gather on the stairs. The traveler seems to feel "their strangeness," though he can only hear the sound of his horse moving, "cropping the dark turf" behind him (lines 23). This is the first sound since the traveler last spoke on line 8.

The traveler knocks on the door to "smote" it a final time and then speaks out to say that he "kept his word" by coming. All is silent except for the sounds he and his horse make: he puts his foot in the stirrup, and the horse's shoes clang with the ring of "iron on stone," and then the "silence surge[s]" back once the sound of the "plunging hoofs" has faded away.

What is the theme of the poem "The Listeners"?

"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"  (de la Mare)

The above passage from the poem suggests that the theme of the poem is loss.  The traveler has returned to a house that is familiar to him, only to find that the inhabitants are gone.  He has returned to this house becuase of a promise that he made to the inyabitants of the house. There is also a suggestion in the poem that there are people in the house who are listening to his pounding on the door but refuse to answer it, but it could be because there is no one left inside to answer the door. The traveler might be the last surviving member of the family who once lived in the house.

"Evidently to keep some promise, perhaps to those who are no longer alive, since he is “the one man left awake” (line 32). Something, though, has caused him to come to this lonely and isolated place in the middle of the night and compelled him to cry out repeatedly to a deserted house, without entering to see for himself who or what might be there."

"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:" (de la Mare)

The poem "The Listeners" explores the idea of the supernatural that is prevalent in De La Mare's work.  The work opens with a foreboding presence of this abandoned house.  We know it's abandoned and left with a sense of disrepair because of the way the poet describes it:  "the grasses" in front of the house, "the forest's ferny floor" and the bird flying out of the turret at the top of the house.  The theme of the supernatural or unexplained continues when the speaker repeatedly asks if anyone is there.  His response:  "A host of phantom listeners."  This idea of loneliness of people, but something else being present is repeated throughout the poem.  Note when the poet talks about the speaker who "stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight/ To that voice from the world of men."  There is nothing, yet something there.  Such ideas confirm the supernatural or other worldly theme of the poem.  The poem ends with the traveler calling out to the house, "Tell them I came" as he leaves.  It is almost as if the traveler realizes that something, not someone, else is there and he acknowledges it as he leaves with his horse.  The theme of a supernatural imagination is present in this poem that compels the reader to embrace both what is there and what might be there.

What is your critical appreciation of "The Listeners" by Walter de la Mare?

Walter de la Mare’s poem “The Listeners” vividly depicts a traveler who, upon arriving at his destination, knocks repeatedly on a door. After multiple attempts fail to bring about a response, the nameless traveler turns and leaves. Despite the simplicity of the poem’s narrative, it is an aesthetically beautiful poem that uses vivid language, alliteration, and apostrophe to equate the isolation of the traveler with that of the reader.

The use of vivid language and alliteration in “The Listeners” is so excessive that it almost draws attention to the artifice of poetry itself. Although the narrative is limited and largely left unexplained, in its place we have an excess of description—we receive a description of the forest and learn that the traveler’s eyes are grey. But it’s not simply the excess of descriptive language; equally important is the poetic form through which it is presented. Consider, for example, the use of alliteration in line four: “Of the forest’s ferny floor.” This repetition of sound is excessive, and it draws the reader’s attention to the poetic techniques that the poem employs.

This surplus of detail, however, is not a weakness of the poem but instead its primary strength. In a poem where we have little sense of what is happening narratively, our attention shifts to poetics itself. The traveler is isolated and unable to communicate, both with those within the house and with the reader.

In the poem’s final moments, the speaker interjects, only further drawing attention to the poem’s structure. “Ay,” says the speaker. In this moment, the speaker, who previously existed only to present narrative and details, becomes a character, employing a form of apostrophe. Apostrophe is a literary technique in which the speaker addresses an absent figure, and this technique is fitting for “The Listeners.” “The Listeners” is about so many different absences: the absence of communication, the absence of whoever the traveler is trying to reach, and the absence that is produced by a poem, which is never able to truly communicate with its reader. This absence is tragic, but it is also as beautiful as the forest that we read about.

What feeling does "The Listeners" by Walter de La Mare create?

This question is asking you about mood—that is, the atmosphere a writer has created in a piece of writing. How does this poem make you feel?

"The Listeners" is one of my favorite poems because of its haunting, mysterious mood. There's a real enigma to it: the central character is unnamed, referred to only as "the Traveller," and we have no idea who he's addressing in the house or what he has promised. "I kept my word," he tells the listeners—but what was this? Has he promised to return to the house? If so, why?

The Listeners themselves, too, are extremely mysterious: part of this is because they remain so silent, keeping their secrets, while part of it is de la Mare's use of words like "phantom" to suggest that they are otherworldly and beyond our explanation. We do not even know whether the Traveller knows they are there, but why else would he go on talking into the silence? The tiny details in the poem also add to the sense of atmosphere: an auditory image is created in the description of how the horse "champed the grasses" in the forest, uninterested in what is going on—he is not disturbed by the Listeners. Meanwhile, the house has evidently been abandoned for a long time and become a home for animals, as is indicated by the rather Gothic image of the owl which "flew out of the turret" over the head of the Traveller.

What is your analysis of "The Listeners" by Walter de la Mare?

In this poem, Walter de la Mare gives life to emptiness. We have a lonely traveler, having ridden into a lush and overgrown forest on a horse, knocking at an abandoned home. It is nighttime, and twice, as he knocks, he repeats, “Is anybody there?’” but no answer comes.  In lines 27 and 28, he speaks to the silence before him again:  “Tell them I came, and no one answered, / That I kept my word.”  The reader here learns that he had made some distant promise to come to this dwelling in the wood; and yet after coming so far, he finds that it is all in vain.

Between the traveler’s initial questions and his final request, there is a long break where he does not speak, and instead the listeners in the house are described. De la Mare excels at giving the reader a sense of total silence and isolation, juxtaposing the noises of the man knocking and speaking, and the grazing of the horse, with the stillness he gets from the house in reply. The “phantom listeners” are the negative imprints of those who once dwelt in the house; negative imprints in the form of

…faint moonbeams on the dark stair
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveler’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry.

The only thing causing any movement is the traveler himself, whose voice disturbs the stillness of the air.  De la Mare uses basic vocabulary to evoke this stillness; words that echo thinly through the darkness, which therefore serve to emphasize it. The reader is given images of emptiness, as the moonbeams on the stairs in the excerpt above, and the “empty hall.”  Every time the traveler speaks, his words echo “through the shadowiness of the still house.”  Shadows are the only things that stir in this place. And yet the shadows, and the moonlight, and the overgrowth in the eaves, all seem to be listening intently in the quiet of the night.

This poem plays upon humanity’s estrangement from nature, and the utter silence of the wider world in the face of one individual’s quest. The world waits for no man’s promises, but continues on as it will.  We have the contrast of man, searching, with both his horse, indifferent and unaware of the loneliness, and with the silent watchfulness of the dwelling before him.  And really, it is the fact that we have a house at all that makes the scene uncanny and strange; a house implies humans, which implies life similar to one’s own; it is the absence of such that disturbs.  The absence of something that should be there.  And it is in this absence that the man – or the poet, or the reader – creates these “phantoms,” these imaginary beings, to do the listening.  These silent nothings have been personified because a house requires some sort of human life; the traveler speaks to them because it is the unnaturalness of nobody in a home, rather than nothing, that is unnerving.  And yet the man’s discomfort contrasts sharply with the nature all around him – his horse, the plants, the night itself – these things belong in this space, have adopted it as their own.  The birds are disturbed only by the human in the picture, at this old human abode; they live there peacefully otherwise.  Nature has taken over, and man is no longer necessary.

In the end, when the traveler mounts his horse and rides away, the reader is left in this silence, with the house, and the scene falls back exactly as it had been before the traveler arrived.  And the phantom listeners – that is, nothing at all – remain to witness “how the silence surged softly backward, / When the plunging hoofs were gone.”  As a side note, the alliteration of /s/ sounds in the final few lines leaves the reader with an impression of a mere whisper, as of a breeze through the vines.

Can you summarize "The Listeners" by Walter de la Mare?

This poem is about an unnamed Traveler who, with his horse, arrives at a seemingly deserted house in the middle of a forest. We know that it is night time ("moonlit") when the Traveler knocks on the door of the house, calling out to see if anybody is there.

By all signs, the house is empty. An owl flies up out of it, suggesting abandonment, and nobody answers the Traveler. The Traveler, to be certain, knocks again on the door to no response.

However, the poet tells the reader that the house is not really empty—instead, a "host of phantom listeners" stand in the house, listening to the voice of the Traveler as if it were a voice from another world —"the world of men." We are not told who these listeners are, but they are evidently eerie and otherworldly, presumably supernatural.

The Traveler seems to perceive their presence as well, for he continues, "Tell them I came, and no-one answered." He is particularly concerned that they pass on the message that he has "kept his word." The poem's mystery is a large part of its charm—we do not know what promise the Traveler made, which he is now keeping as he returns to this abandoned house where only ghosts are here to listen. But by coming to the house, he seems to have fulfilled what was promised. At the end of the poem, the Traveler gallops away into the distance, with the Listeners still listening until they can no longer hear the sound of his horse's hooves.

"The Listeners" by Walter de la Mare is a narrative poem written from a third person limited point of view, with a character named only as "The Traveller" as the protagonist. Although it is not printed with stanza breaks, it generally follows a stanzaic rhyme scheme, with each group of four lines rhyming in the pattern ABCB.

The Traveller of the poem arrives by horseback at a deserted house in the forest on a moonlit night. He knocks on the door three times but no one answers. The third time he knocks, he says "‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,/ That I kept my word," and then he departs. 

Inside the house are the "listeners" of the title. We are not told if they are real, although they seem to be more ghosts, spirits, the dead, or memories than living people. 

The narrator does not tell us who the Traveller is, what happened in the house, or what was promised. Instead, the point of the poem is its air of mystery and its creation of a dream-like atmosphere. 

Can you identify instances of alliteration in the poem "The Listeners"?

Alliteration is a literary device in which closely connected words start with the same sound. A good example comes from the famous tongue twister “She Sells Seashells.” Here, we have an s sound, which is repeated several times.

In poems, alliteration tends to be used for emphasis, to highlight something that the poet finds particularly important. In “The Listeners” by Walter de la Mare, we have an example of alliteration in the fourth line, where the speaker refers to the Traveller's horse munching the grasses

of the forest's ferny floor.

On the face of it, this may not seem like a particularly important detail. But what the poet is trying to do here is to set the scene, to establish a background against which the action of the poem unfolds.

He wants us to know that the Traveller has just emerged from a forest to knock on the door of the cottage. The door is moonlit, which, along the forest, provides us with a suitably Romantic backdrop to the strange events that follow.

Another example of alliteration comes in the poem's penultimate line, that is to say, the last line but one:

And how the silence surged softly backward.

In this particular case, the speaker is drawing out attention to the manner of the Traveller's departure as experienced by the ghostly inhabitants of the cottage. When he was standing there knocking at the door, the disturbed spirits stood there listening. But now that he's gone, silence has been restored, and it's this silence, surging softly backward as the Traveller rides off, that the poet wishes to emphasize as the poem heads towards its conclusion.