| '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 ferny floor. | |
| And a bird flew up out of the turret, | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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 | 30 |
| 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, | 35 |
| When the plunging hoofs were gone. | |
