'The Listeners' have adept and important themes for adults, as this is their main audience, such as loneliness of the traveller, the soul of “the listeners”, and the horse, which I think is it's central theme. This leads to rejection of the natural world as the “bird flew up out of the turret” when he knocks, rejection from the … Read more

I think the central theme of the poem is loneliness, which is confirmed in the quote “And how the silence surged softly backward, when the plunging hoofs were gone.” This suggests that the listeners desperately want to hear his voice, and when rejected, they revert back to misery. This could be because they are lonely, … Read more