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"Is there anyone there?" said the Traveler,
knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in silenced champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor;
And a birds flew out of the turret,
Above the Traveler's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time:
"Is there anyone there?" he said.
But no one descended to the Traveler;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill.
Leaned over and looked into his gray 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,
Harkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveler's call.
And he felt in his heart the 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 wake:
Ay they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on the stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
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