Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by Walter de la Marr. He was an English poet who lived from 1873 to 1956.

And he has quite an interesting story because he was too poor to go to school beyond his early

childhood. He didn't have any formal high school, for example. And he worked for many years as a

bookkeeper for a company called Anglo-American Oil Company. And it wasn't until he was well into

adulthood, well into middle age, that he was able to spend

most of his time as a writer. He is best known for his poetry, although he did write novels.

And his poetry was beloved by the likes of Thomas Hardy, T.S. Eliot, and W. H. Auden.

And the poem that I'm going to read today is called The Listeners,

and it is a poem that Thomas Hardy actually requested be read to him during his last days

when he really could only listen to poetry. This is how it goes.

Is there anybody there? said the traveler, knocking on the moonlit door.

And his horse, in this silence, chomped the grasses 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

...