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'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;

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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;

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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.

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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:

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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.

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Go to:  IS ANYONE THERE?

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