This poem could be looked at in several different ways. However, I look at it as a perspective on life. I look at the traveler in the poem as a procrastinator who promised to do a deed, but never got around to doing it. It seems that when he does finally come back to whatever he meant to say or do, that it did not matter anymore. As the poem progresses, anyone reading starts to realize that when the traveler speaks no one appears to respond or listen to his cries. He speaks to what seems like an abandoned house while his horse gallops in nature behind him.
After trying numerous times to talk to the mysterious person he came looking for, the author begins to establish a sad ending to the poem. For example, Walter says, “Though every word he spake, fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house”. He makes the traveler seem disappointed and angry as he rides away on his horse. Overall, this was a well written poem that everyone should read.
It is a dream from the moment of waking. When one can slide between dream and sleep but be concoius that you are in dream and also dreaming tof being awake,
The layout of the poem is exaclty as you would experience in a dream, the flow of the story is unbroken, the view point of the story teller flows in three dimensions without problem while failing to recognise the incapable/broken aspects of the story.
The one man left awake is the man at the door and the waking person watching his dream
No head can look over the window cill into his grey eyes as the man is not looking up to the window but a minor technical aspect like that never stops a dream.
The horse is eating from the forest floor which is sensible, but then the dream splits to the man at the front door, by the time we return to the horse the dream has placed it on a grassy area, but after the next round of knocking the dream has moved the chomping horse to being on a stone flagged road (sound of iron on stone )
The thronging of the moonbeams is a clear viewpoint from within the silent building at the exact moment after the knock on the door, the listener is wide awake in his dream inside the building as a pure observer and just as instantly outside again which is how a dream works, If the listener is himself the Traveller outside he would be able to view himself from inside but wouldnt be ` in body` so can only see and listen, but not be `taking part` on the inside, hence his viewpoint and his heartfelt knoweldge that when outside again that nothing stirred inside,oneself is the viewpoint and can switch from watching through ones own eyes or watching from any other viewpoint it wants to, instantly.
My belief is it is a waking dream, remembered and recorded.