Arthur Stringer’s “Doors” reads like a brief, breath-held moment of listening in the dark. The speaker calls attention to faint footsteps that falter through a gloomy house, then to smaller, stranger sounds: a door closing, a whisper waking, something sighing across the dusk. The repeated “Listen!” and the questions give the poem an urgent, hushed quality, as if the speaker is trying to catch a presence before it disappears. The house gradually becomes a metaphor for a life—its “lonely chambers” and “shadowy passage” are like memories or inner rooms of the self. At first the speaker only senses that something is near, but by the end the feeling sharpens into loss. Something has departed, and the closing door is final. What remains is a powerful emptiness, as if the whole house of life has been hollowed out. The mood is quiet, ghostly, and sad—not loud horror, but the stillness after an absence.
Doors — Summary
Listen! Footsteps Are they, That falter through the gloom, That echo through the lonely chambers Of our house of life?
Listen! Did a door close? Did a whisper waken? Did a ghostly something Sigh across the dusk?
From the mournful silence Something, something went! Far down some shadowy passage Faintly closed a door-- And O how empty lies Our house of life!