The Traveler?

The Listeners
By Walter 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.

When I first encountered this poem I thought that it was a poem about the absence of God. We as the travelers have come looking for God but he is not there. We have kept our promise but he has not kept his. It wasn't until someone called my attention to the fact the Traveler is capatalized. A detail that suggests the reverse. The Traveler is God coming to call upon us. But instead of people he finds the hollow shell of a house. Like a theif in the night he came and found men asleep.

The listeners are you and me. As we read we here His call and knock on the door. Are you asleep?

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with himi, and he with Me. (Revelations 3:20)