The Listeners and Other Poems — Edition Insights

Recurring Figures: Wanderers, Listeners, and the Alone

Across the collection, de la Mare returns to figures who are isolated by their quest or their stillness. The Traveller in 'The Listeners' is defined by his unanswered call; the Wanderer in 'The Journey' is 'heart-sick' and 'footsore,' torn between the witch's offer of rest and the voices of the past. In 'Old Susan,' the titular character sits alone reading, 'rooted in Romance,' while the candle gutters and the night wind enters. Even the speaker of 'Alone' is unnamed, defined only by solitude. These characters are not developed psychologically; they are positions in a landscape of waiting.

Thresholds and the Architecture of Expectation

Doors, windows, and gates mark the points where the living might meet the otherworldly. The Traveller knocks on a 'moonlit door'; the witch in 'The Journey' peeps from her 'casement small'; in 'Old Susan,' the window is 'opened wide to win / The sweet night air.' These openings invite but do not guarantee entry. The 'dark stair' in 'The Listeners' leads to an 'empty hall,' and the Tower of Ivory in 'Time Passes' has a broken stair and a rotting frame. Architecture here is not shelter but a stage for absence.

Silence as a Presence

Silence in these poems is not empty but inhabited. The 'phantom listeners' throng the moonbeams, 'hearkening' to the Traveller's call. In 'Old Susan,' the silence of the night is broken only by a distant cock crow or the turn of a page. The witch's woods in 'The Journey' hold a 'stillness' that makes the sunshine 'pale and trembling.' De la Mare often describes silence as something that can be stirred or shaken: the Traveller's voice leaves the air 'stirred and shaken,' and after he departs, 'the silence surged softly backward.' This is a world where sound is an intrusion, and quiet has weight.

Movement Between Scenes: From Garden to Forest to Tower

The poems shift between distinct, almost archetypal settings: a garden with cherry trees, a forest with a moonlit house, a valley with an ivory tower, a witch's wood. These are not realistic places but symbolic stages. The movement between them is often abrupt—the Traveller arrives and leaves in a single stanza; the Wanderer turns away from the witch's cottage without entering. In 'The Three Cherry Trees,' the lady walks in the garden, then vanishes, leaving only a ghostly footstep. The effect is of a dream geography where each location is a separate chamber of longing or memory.

Readers approaching this collection should attend to what is not said: the pauses between stanzas, the unanswered questions, the figures who listen rather than speak. De la Mare's craft lies in making absence tangible—through the creak of a stirrup, the scent of a fading flower, the echo of a word left hanging. These poems reward slow reading, with an ear for the silence that surrounds each line.