Questions and Answer; The Listeners

The listeners

1. The time was sometime in the middle of the night. The phrase” moonlit” door indicates the tive.

2.   He was puzzled because he knocked many times and no one answered. No one answered. No one seemed to be living in the house.

3.  The word and phrases such as turret, leaf-fringed sill, empty hall, lone house and forest’s ferny floor suggest that it was an old fashioned house built long ago and no one lived there; it might also be noted that no one replied to the knock of the traveller.

4.   Yes, the traveler feels the presence of the listeners. These lines show that he felt their presence;

“Andhe felt in his heart their strangeness,

  Their stillness answering his cry” 

Think and answer

1.  The phantom listeners were on the other side. They seem to be afraid of the traveler. they do not open the door but stand quietly listening to him. 2. The lines of the bird and the horse contribute to the sense of eeriness. Everything else is silent and immobile, except for the sudden flight of the bird and the horse chewing the grasses. These events produce a chilling effect on the reader.

Using words

1.     Turret     2.Smote 3.    Hearkening4.               Phantom 5.   Aye

Appreciating the poem

1.  The traveler speaks, knocks, silence, horse chomps grass, bird flies, smites, traveler speaks, he stands still, phantom listeners dwell in the house listening to traveler’s voice, quiet night, they stand thronging, hearken, stillness answers his cry, horse moves, cropping the dark turf, traveler smites door loudly, traveler speaks, there was no stir, his words echoed through the still house, they hear his feet upon the stirrup, sound of iron on stone, silence surges backward, sound of hoofs recede.

2.  Smote upon the door a second tive, he suddenly smote the door, louder, and lifted his head, the silence surged softly backward.

By Upendra