The Listeners and Other Whispers of Fantasy

Last November, I checked out a book from our school library. It was an old book, beaten, but not precisely worn, jet black but for the small white sheet that held Dewey’s dear print. The publication was Japanese, of all things, with an introduction in Japanese characters (which is sad; I would pay dearly to know what it says). But the subject of the book was a today little-known English poet/writer. His name was Walter de la Mare.

Walter de la Mare, of French Huguenot descent, worked as a statistician for an English company called Standard Oil. He was a family man, and an avid writer from the start. He wrote several books of poems and stories, both for children and adults, and had very interesting theories about imagination.

If I understand his theory right (and I only just started to study up on him), de la Mare believed that there were two types of imagination: the childlike and the boylike. Most often, we all start with the childlike, which is accepting of things fantastic, such as Dragons and magic swords, but as we grow, we develop the boylike imagination, which takes us away from those things, being more analytical. This progression, de la Mare believed, was a response to the terrors of the world (which one might conceive of as “unnatural,” if one were so inclined) that, as it were, frighten the childlike imagination away. However, de la Mare believed that it was the childlike imagination that was more natural and fitting, and this is the part which he sought to awaken in his work.

I would like to give you a sampling of his work. The first is his most famous work, the poem called “The Listeners,” which is what I first read that enthralled me so with his most powerful pen:

"Is anybody there?" said the Traveler,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence chomped the grasses

Of the forest's ferny floor.

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the traveler's head:

And he smote upon the door a second time;

"Is there anybody 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,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveler's call.

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 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 awake:

Aye, 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.


Oh! It calls to the heart and imagination in the very way a poem should. It tells a story, indeed, it does. But it is a fragmented story. It is an echo of a story, of which we only have pieces that are confusing and hard to put together. Who is this man? How does he represent the “World of Men?” Who is he seeking to contact, and what was the promise that brought him? What is this place, who once lived here, and why have they retreated so, only listening now, and doing naught else? We have no answers. Only are own imagination can fill in the gaps.

But it is a powerful story. We can feel the power, the ancientness of the place, a place that once had great meaning. It is written in heavy language; like cumbersome acrylic oils upon blank, white canvas, it whispers of subtleties barely known and just out of reach.

Or here’s another, a bit more furtive, called “The Familiar”:

“Are you far away?”
“yes, I am far – far;
Where the green wave shelves to the sand,
And the rainbows are;
And an ageless sun beats fierce
From an empty sky:
There, O thou Shadow forlorn;
Is the wraith of thee, I.”

“Are you happy, most Lone?”
“Happy, forsooth!
Who am eyes of the air; voice of the foam;
Ah, happy in truth/.
My hair is astream, this cheek
Glistens like silver, and see,
As the gold to the dross, the ghost in the mirk,
I am calling to thee.”

“Nay, I am bound,
And your cry faints out in my mind,
Peace not on earth have I found,
Yet to earth I am resigned,
Cease thy shrill mockery, Voice,
Nor answer again.”
“O Master, thick cloud shuts thee out
And cold tempests of rain.”


Again, the questions. Who is speaking to whom? What are they talking about? There is no doubt; the sense of story lingers thick because of the very questions themselves. We want the answers to fill in the gaps. We want the Story.

I submit that in these poems, and many others of his, there is the crucial element of story, and more often than not, fantasy is his vehicle of communication. Something about the realm of fantasy lends itself to mystery and inspiration, explanation and wonderment, and that is why I think it will continue to be a call to people, especially as we become more modern and more lost in the “boylike imagination” that rejects, or at least ignores, these deep things. And that is why poems like Walter de la Mare’s must be read, and cherished. Because they whisper to us stories of great importance, and they whisper to that part of us that needs to hear them the most.

***

I read the book again and again and finally, I found, I could not part with it. I could not give it up to the library. So I went in and said, “I would like to buy this book from you.”

The guy looked at me curiously, then said, “Well, let’s see how many times it’s been checked out.” He took the book from my tense hands and looked at it with a cocked eyebrow. “Walter de la Mare,” he read slowly. “Never heard of him.” He ran the cold, white barcode through his computer and then straightened. “Well, looks like this has never been checked out!”

“Really?” I asked, honestly flabbergasted.

“Well, not since we have gone electronic, nope. Sure, we’ll sell it to ya.”

I was frozen a moment. Shall I really rob this already lopsided, lacking library of this prize? And yet, no one even knew of it. No one had checked out this lonely book. None here knew of its secrets. Then I grabbed the book greedily, and reached in my pocket. “I’ll take it.” He ripped off the barcode then, I gave him my money, and I walked out.

As I came to the doors, I saw that it was cold and rainy out. I smiled. I got the feeling that this was the kind of day ole Walter would have liked.