When was the poem the listeners written

Donate Ask a Librarian. T S Eliot was in fact an admirer of de la Mare, as well as his publisher, and he went so far as to pen him a tribute: When the nocturnal traveller can arouse No sleeper by his call….. By whom, and by what means, was this designed? We know the answer to that question, at least. Ask us. Cite This Page. The Listeners Full Text. Lines It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Everything you need for every book you read.

The way the content is organized and presented is seamlessly smooth, innovative, and comprehensive. Home About Story Contact Help. For example, De La Mare repeats words like moon, leaf, still, quiet.

This sort of repetition is an important feature of song, and can also function like a chant or spell, lulling us and helping to thicken the tension of the scene. Situational repetition , on the other hand, helps reveal the character of the Traveller and theme of the poem. Events that repeat themselves include: knocking on the door; the horse cropping the grass; the silence of the listeners.

So as the poem continues and the situations repeat, we can see the Traveller becoming more and more agitated. He can sense the presence of unseen listeners inside the house and becomes frustrated at their refusal to reply. This frustration boils over in the following lines:. This time he speaks in the imperative tense by which the verb is placed at the start of a phrase: Tell them to give a command, as if he has run out of patience.

The structure of the stanza is also revealing; do you see how the first line enjambs into the second? At the end of the day, the poem raises more questions than it answers. It sets out its stall by beginning with an unanswered question and even contains the phrase: no one answered.

Who is the Traveller? Where has he come from? Did he know the people in the house? Could he have been a relation of theirs? What happened to them? Did they die? How did they die? To whom? What is the significance of keeping his word? This is because we need to know who you are and how we can talk to you, and where to send your competition resource pack if you are eligible to take part in the competition. Registration takes a minute or two.

We only collect the information we need to run the competition and we will not give it to anyone else without your express permission. Is there anybody there? 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. 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.