The Listeners<\/b><\/p>\n
“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller,
\nKnocking on the moonlit door;
\nAnd his horse in the silence champed the grass
\nOf the forest’s ferny floor;
\nAnd a bird flew up out of the turret,
\nAbove the Traveller’s head:
\nAnd he smote upon the door again a second time;
\n“Is there anybody there?” he said.
\nBut no one descended to the Traveller;
\nNo head from the leaf-fringed sill
\nLeaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
\nWhere he stood perplexed and still.
\nBut only a host of phantom listeners
\nThat dwelt in the lone house then
\nStood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
\nTo that voice from the world of men:
\nStood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
\nThat goes down to the empty hall,
\nHearkening in an air stirred and shaken
\nBy the lonely Traveller’s call.
\nAnd he felt in his heart their strangeness,
\nTheir stillness answering his cry,
\nWhile his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
\n‘Neath the starred and leafy sky;
\nFor he suddenly smote on the door, even
\nLouder, and lifted his head:–
\n“Tell them I came, and no one answered,
\nThat I kept my word,” he said.
\nNever the least stir made the listeners,
\nThough every word he spake
\nFell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
\nFrom the one man left awake:
\nAy, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
\nAnd the sound of iron on stone,
\nAnd how the silence surged softly backward,
\nWhen the plunging hoofs were gone.<\/p>\n
— Walter de la Mare<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Listeners “Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grass 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?” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13662"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16470,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13662\/revisions\/16470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}