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3. What emotions might the Traveller be experiencing as he repeats his question?

eagerness and excitement fear and apprehension

patience and contentment impatience and desperation

4. In the context of the poem, what is the purpose of the ‘phantom listeners’?

They are ghosts that haunt the house.

They are imaginary creatures created by the traveller’s mind.

They represent people who are asleep and unaware of the traveller’s presence.

They symbolise a mysterious, intangible audience listening to the traveller’s call.

B. Answer these questions.

1. These sentences tell the story of what happened in the poem, but they are in a mixed-up
order. Write numbers in the boxes to put them in the correct order.

A man on a horse came to an old house in the woods and knocked on the
moonlit door.

The ghosts were standing on the stairs in the moonlight and in the hall,
listening to him.
His horse was eating the grass outside and a bird flew out of a window in a
high tower above his head.

The traveller felt that there was something strange and scary in the house,

but his horse just kept on eating the grass.
Nobody answered the second time and nobody came down to open the
door, so the traveller began to feel worried and puzzled. He felt there was
something strange going on.

Finally the traveller got on his horse and rode away. The ghosts just listened
to the sound of his horse galloping away until the house was silent again.

He was right! Inside the lonely house there were a lot of ghosts, just quietly
listening to the traveller.

When the traveller shouted out for the third time, the ghosts in the house
just stayed very still. They did not make any noise inside the house.

The traveller knocked on the door a third time, even louder than before.

This time he said, ‘Tell them that I came but nobody answered. Tell them
that I kept my promise.’

Nobody answered him the first time, so the traveller knocked on the door
again and said, ‘Is anybody there?’

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