the listeners

Despite Federer losing last night, I had an absolutely amazing time at the tennis with L. Being there makes all the difference. The seats were closer than I've ever been to the court at a tennis match; I was afraid to ask what he spent on them. It was incredibly kind and thoughtful of him, not just to arrange it, but to go and sit through two and a half hours of a sport I know he doesn't really care for! Must be love. 

And whatever he tells you, I did not get Federer to sign any part of my body. 

The poem today doesn't fit with the post at all, I realise, but I was thinking about it on the way home last night with us out later than usual and the streets relatively quiet (for London). 

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The Listeners

Water de la Mare

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey 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 Traveller’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 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 awake:
Ay, 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.