"Is anybody there?" said the Captain,
Knocking with his hook on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence chomped the leaves
Of the forest's ferny floor.
And a bluebird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Captain's dark head:
And he smote upon the door a second time;
"Is there anybody there?" he said.
But no one descended to the Captain;
No blonde head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his blue eyes,
Where he stood, desperate 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 Captain'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 her 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 as a sob through the shadow 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.