4. What sounds are mentioned in the poem?
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
First, there is human speech, as the traveler stops at a door to ask if anyone is home. He also knocks on the door, another sound. The speaker of the poem refers to the "silence" that pervades the scene, except for the sound of the traveler's horse "champ[ing] the grasses" on the forest floor. The traveler knocks again and calls out once more to ask if anyone is home.
After the first eight lines, which are filled with these sounds, there are no sounds for quite some time. No one answers the traveler's call, though a number of "phantom listeners"—ghosts, I imagine—that live in the house do listen to his voice, as they gather on the stairs. The traveler seems to feel "their strangeness," though he can only hear the sound of his horse moving, "cropping the dark turf" behind him (lines 23). This is the first sound since the traveler last spoke on line 8.
The traveler knocks on the door to "smote" it a final time and then speaks out to say that he "kept his word" by coming. All is silent except for the sounds he and his horse make: he puts his foot in the stirrup, and the horse's shoes clang with the ring of "iron on stone," and then the "silence surge[s]" back once the sound of the "plunging hoofs" has faded away.