Back to: West Bengal Board Class 8th English Guide and Notes
Table of Contents
Introduction:
‘Someone’ is a short poem written by Walter John de le Mare. It is a poem that captures a side of nature that is often not looked at, the sounds of animals in the dark of the night.
About the Poet:
Walter John de le Mare (1873-1956) was an eminent English poet and novelist. He is known for weaving nature artfully into his literary pieces. Famous works of his include ‘The Listeners’, ‘Seaton’s Aunt’ and ‘All Hallows’.
Theme:
The theme of this poem is the secret and hidden world of nature. The persona details on what transpires in the night pertaining to the animals in the woods he resides in. The poem also has a small amount of spookiness in it whereby that can be construed to be a smaller theme too.
Structure:
This short, lyric poem is made up of sixteen lines. It has the rhyme scheme of abab cdcd but it has a slant rhyme.
Stanza 1:
Someone came knocking At my wee, small door; Someone came knocking; I'm sure-sure-sure; I listened, I opened, I looked to left and right, But nought there was a stirring In the still dark night;
The poem begins with the persona stating that someone came knocking at the small door of his house, which, as later is revealed, is in the woods, making it thus a small cabin. When the persona opens the door, however, no one is found and the dark night is still. This is a rather spooky start to the poem.
Stanza 2:
Only the busy beetle Tap-tapping in the wall, Only from the forest The screech-owl's call, Only the cricket whistling While the dewdrops fall, So I know not who came knocking, At all, at all, at all.
The focus of the poem shifts towards nature in this stanza. The persona explores this by stating how all he could hear was the beetle, the owl and the cricket in the woods, nothing more. The poem, however, reverts back to its slightly spooky aura as the persona, even after being sure that someone knocked, is left without an answer for they couldn’t find out who it was who knocked.
Conclusion:
This is a poem that sheds light on nature after the dark. Although it has a touch of eeriness to it, this poem brings out the liveliness of nature when the world falls asleep.
