The Enigma in The Listeners

The Listeners by Walter de la Mare is the exploration of the dichotomous relationship between silence and response. The poem begins with the arrival of a Traveller, a mysterious figure, at an isolated house in the middle of the forest on a moonlit night. Despite his urgent knocks on the front door of the house, he fails to receive any response from the inhabitants of the house. In fact, it is implied that the house is supposedly empty, except for a “host of phantom listeners” who are lurking in the darkness and listening to the cry of the Traveller. In essence, the poem is a depiction of the paradoxical nature of humans having a thirst for knowledge despite being aware of the astounding and inevitable mystery which lies in the path of gaining that knowledge.

The setting of the poem includes a house, residing alone in the middle of a forest and a lonesome Traveller visits it on a moonlit night. As if being one with the nature, even the horse of the Traveller is silent, as it chomped on the desolate “ferny floor” of the forest. All of these together paints a melancholic and meditative picture within the poem. In addition to that, the intentional unresponsive nature of the ghostly inhabitants of the house, which the Traveller is unaware of, adds a supernatural element to the setting poem.

The Inherent Contradiction in Pied Beauty

Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins is a deconstructed sonnet that applauds the diversity of nature created by God. The structure and verses of the poem are reminiscent of a prayer, similar to Bible verses. The little sonnet is the celebration of diverse creation of God. The poem is divided into two stanzas. The first stanza comprises of an assorted set of examples the poet finds beautiful. Meanwhile, the second stanza is more of a generalized statement about the sundry of nature. The poem begins with the call to praise the Lord and it ends on a similar note as well.

All in all, the poet reasons that the God is worthy of any worship simply because of the varied nature of his creation. According to him, only a being as omnipotent as God can paint the sky in dual colors as such of a brinded cow; can put rose-hued speckles on trout; can plot and piece a land beautifully etc. Only a powerful being like God can create something original and beautiful but so strange. However, there is a huge contradiction with the poet’s reasoning. Even though he praises God for creating a multitude of objects and creatures, God himself remains eternal and absolute with no scope of diversity. God himself is an infinite constant – an unchangeable being. Hence the question remains that how something as static as God can create myriads of different things. The poem finds beauty in difference. But as God is unvarying and perpetual in qualities, it almost appears as though God himself may not be the most beautiful being. Hence, the message of the poem is inherently in contradiction to itself.