THE LISTENERS
“The Listeners” is a very poem written by the English poet
Walter de la Mare (25th April 1873--22nd June 1956). It
reads as follows:
“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 ferry floor.
And a bird
flow u 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
look 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; he quiet of the moonlight/To that voice
from the world of men:
Stood
thronging the ain 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 the
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.
COMMENTARY
According to C.B. Cox and A.E.Dyson (Modern Poetry, Orient
Longman, 1963), it is a poem about silence
and loneliness, as de la Mare’s poems usually are. Even the title makes clear
that the Traveller, though his is the only human voice in the poem, matters
less than the listeners, who say nothing, are phantoms, and can hardly be separated
from the silence surrounding them. Into the silence and solitude, again
typically, there rides a single man. De la Mare’s world is a world of one; there
are no relationships in it, either to people, or to places, or to time. The
Traveller might be Any Man, the episode Any Time and Any Place, as in a sense
they are.
With due respect to Cox ad Dyson, to
me it is a poem of modern alienation. A dreadful change has emerged in human
relationships. Friendships are turning out to be more false than ever before.
Kith and kin are behaving like strangers. Hosts have invented ways of dishonouring
the invitations formally handed out to
their guests.
The Traveller is the modern alienated man. Mark his words: “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 ad still. He is perplexed at their inhospitable and disgraceful
behaviour. He has not come uninvited. “And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
their stillness answering his cry.” Note
the word “cry”whch emanated from the depth of his heart. He smote upon the door of the hosts’ tall building
not once but twice, made the smiting even
louder. At this stage, he starts believing that the listeners are not
deaf. They have fully healthy ears, but
they have intentionally become deaf. They are unfaithful, whereas he is still
faithful; he has come to the rendezvous at
dead of night, after riding a long distance , just to keep
his commitment, his perennial faith. “Tell them I came, and no one answered,
that I kept my word.”
This is what is happening
in the modern word today. Against one who is still determined to keep his word, his eternal faith, there are
millions who are disinclined to appreciate and welcome him.
Now, there are no listeners; consequently we have to live
with silence and loneliness.
***********
3rd
May 2021 G.
R. Kanwal
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