Answer: The poet develops the haunting and nervous mood by depicting the experiences of the traveller.
Explanation:
‘The Listeners’ is an attention grabbing poem written by Walter de la Mare. Mood of any poem is the feeling the readers get after reading the work of a poet. In ‘The Listeners’ the readers comes across different moods throughout the poem. The setting of the poem creates a haunting or fearful mood. The lines ‘Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest’s ferny floor’ depicts the creepiness of the house which is set in the middle of the forest, which makes readers experience an unnerving chill. Apart from this, the poem also develops a suspenseful and nervous mood when the traveler knocks the door and nobody answers it. The line ‘And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller’ makes the readers a bit nervous as to what might happen now and creates a suspense.
