Thursday, November 12, 2015

1. Read the poem below.
2. In your own words , tell me what you think is going on in the poem. Who is the traveller? (the UK spelling, by the way) Why did he come? What happened in the past? Who are the listeners? Who else might be there? Why did no one answer? Where is all of this happening? What else came to your mind while reading this? What are your thoughts about this poem? Be sure to tell me what you think and feel, not what someone else thinks or what you believe the author meant. I would rather hear what was going on in your brain. This is a one-page minimum.
3. Be sure to have read Chapters 7-9 in A Tale of Two Cities by tomorrow. There will be a quiz.


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 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?" 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.