The Full Text of “The Highwayman”
PART ONE
1The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
2The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
3The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
4And the highwayman came riding—
5 Riding—riding—
6The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.
7He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
8A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.
9They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.
10And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
11 His pistol butts a-twinkle,
12His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.
13Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard.
14He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.
15He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
16But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
17 Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
18Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
19And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
20Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and peaked.
21His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
22But he loved the landlord’s daughter,
23 The landlord’s red-lipped daughter.
24Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—
25“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night,
26But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
27Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
28Then look for me by moonlight,
29 Watch for me by moonlight,
30I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”
31He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand,
32But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand
33As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
34And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
35 (O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
36Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.
PART TWO
37He did not come in the dawning. He did not come at noon;
38And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,
39When the road was a gypsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor,
40A red-coat troop came marching—
41 Marching—marching—
42King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door.
43They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale instead.
44But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot of her narrow bed.
45Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
46There was death at every window;
47 And hell at one dark window;
48For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.
49They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest.
50They had bound a musket beside her, with the muzzle beneath her breast!
51“Now, keep good watch!” and they kissed her. She heard the doomed man say—
52Look for me by moonlight;
53 Watch for me by moonlight;
54I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!
55She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
56She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
57They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years
58Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
59 Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
60The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!
61The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for the rest.
62Up, she stood up to attention, with the muzzle beneath her breast.
63She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
64For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
65 Blank and bare in the moonlight;
66And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love’s refrain.
67Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horsehoofs ringing clear;
68Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
69Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
70The highwayman came riding—
71 Riding—riding—
72The red coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still.
73Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
74Nearer he came and nearer. Her face was like a light.
75Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
76Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
77 Her musket shattered the moonlight,
78Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.
79He turned. He spurred to the west; he did not know who stood
80Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own blood!
81Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear
82How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
83 The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
84Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.
85Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
86With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high.
87Blood red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;
88When they shot him down on the highway,
89 Down like a dog on the highway,
90And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.
. . .
91And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
92When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
93When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
94A highwayman comes riding—
95 Riding—riding—
96A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
97Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.
98He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred.
99He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
100But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
101 Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
102Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
The Full Text of “The Highwayman”
PART ONE
1The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
2The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
3The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
4And the highwayman came riding—
5 Riding—riding—
6The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.
7He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
8A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.
9They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.
10And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
11 His pistol butts a-twinkle,
12His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.
13Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard.
14He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.
15He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
16But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
17 Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
18Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
19And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
20Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and peaked.
21His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
22But he loved the landlord’s daughter,
23 The landlord’s red-lipped daughter.
24Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—
25“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night,
26But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
27Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
28Then look for me by moonlight,
29 Watch for me by moonlight,
30I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”
31He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand,
32But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand
33As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
34And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
35 (O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
36Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.
PART TWO
37He did not come in the dawning. He did not come at noon;
38And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,
39When the road was a gypsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor,
40A red-coat troop came marching—
41 Marching—marching—
42King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door.
43They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale instead.
44But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot of her narrow bed.
45Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
46There was death at every window;
47 And hell at one dark window;
48For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.
49They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest.
50They had bound a musket beside her, with the muzzle beneath her breast!
51“Now, keep good watch!” and they kissed her. She heard the doomed man say—
52Look for me by moonlight;
53 Watch for me by moonlight;
54I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!
55She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
56She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
57They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years
58Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
59 Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
60The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!
61The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for the rest.
62Up, she stood up to attention, with the muzzle beneath her breast.
63She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
64For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
65 Blank and bare in the moonlight;
66And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love’s refrain.
67Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horsehoofs ringing clear;
68Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
69Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
70The highwayman came riding—
71 Riding—riding—
72The red coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still.
73Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
74Nearer he came and nearer. Her face was like a light.
75Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
76Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
77 Her musket shattered the moonlight,
78Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.
79He turned. He spurred to the west; he did not know who stood
80Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own blood!
81Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear
82How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
83 The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
84Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.
85Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
86With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high.
87Blood red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;
88When they shot him down on the highway,
89 Down like a dog on the highway,
90And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.
. . .
91And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
92When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
93When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
94A highwayman comes riding—
95 Riding—riding—
96A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
97Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.
98He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred.
99He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
100But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
101 Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
102Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
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“The Highwayman” Introduction
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"The Highwayman" is the English poet Alfred Noyes's most famous work, a tale of doomed love and dashing outlawry. In this long narrative poem, a handsome highwayman (an 18th-century robber on horseback) is in love with the beauteous Bess, an innkeeper's daughter. The two swear to meet each other "by moonlight"—but the envy of the villainous "Tim the ostler" and the cruelty of a troop of "red-coat" soldiers means their attempted rendezvous ends in tragedy. This poem's romantic melodrama and breathless, driving rhythm have made it a long-time favorite, and generations of schoolchildren have learned to recite it. Noyes first published this poem in Blackwood's magazine in 1906, and later collected it in his book Forty Singing Seamen, and Other Poems (1907).
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“The Highwayman” Summary
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The poem begins on a dark and stormy night, when a highwayman (a robber mounted on horseback) comes galloping over a wild moor toward an old inn. Dressed fancily in a tricorn hat, lace cravat, and wine-red velvet coat, the highwayman is a dashing, romantic figure, and he's on his way to visit his beloved Bess, the innkeeper's beautiful daughter. Unfortunately, Tim, the inn's jealous ostler (the guy who cares for travelers' horses), is also in love with Bess. He watches secretly as the highwayman arrives beneath Bess's window.
The highwayman tells Bess that he's off to commit another robbery, but he swears he'll return to her by the time the moon is up the next evening. Bess leans from her window to kiss him, and he gallops off on his way.
Before the highwayman can return the next evening, a troop of soldiers (presumably tipped off by Tim the ostler) arrive at the inn. They tie Bess up and hide in her room, waiting to capture the highwayman. Cruelly, they taunt her, kiss her against her will, prop her up where she'll be able to see her beloved coming down the road, and threaten her by tying a musket to her side with the barrel pointed at her heart.
Bess strains to escape until the ropes cut into her hands, but she can't free herself. By the time midnight comes, however, she finds that she's able to reach the trigger of the gun that's pointed at her. When she hears the sound of the highwayman galloping along the road, she pulls the trigger, sacrificing her life to warn her beloved of the danger.
The highwayman, hearing the gunshot, wheels away without knowing what has happened. But the next morning, he learns that Bess shot herself in order to keep him free. Grief-stricken, he turns back to avenge her death, charging at the soldiers. But they shoot him, and he dies in the road.
And still, the story's narrator concludes, on stormy nights, you can see the ghost of the highwayman riding up to the old inn, where the ghost of Bess sits waiting for him.
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“The Highwayman” Themes
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The Power of Love
"The Highwayman" tells the tale of doomed love: the romance between the titular highwayman (a roving robber on horseback) and Bess, an innkeeper's daughter, was always going to be a star-crossed one. But these lovers' devotion to each other ultimately persists even beyond the grave. This poem's vision of true romance is one in which love spurs people to acts of courage and self-sacrifice, and outlasts even death.
The world is clearly against the highwayman and his beloved Bess. The highwayman is an outlaw, and the couple meet only "by moonlight," snatching kisses when they think they're unseen. But their efforts to be with each other suggest that their bond is deep. Bess even wears her devotion, "plaiting a dark-red love knot into her long black hair" as a symbol of how closely her heart is bound to the highwayman's.
It's this deep love that eventually leads to both of the lovers' demises. Bess is captured by a "red-coat troop" (a band of soldiers) who tie her up to use her as bait in an ambush. Bravely, she manages to pull the trigger of a musket that's pointed at her, thus warning the highwayman that something's up—at the cost of her own life. The highwayman, for his part, is so destroyed by her death that he turns and rides straight back at the soldiers, "shrieking a curse to the sky," in a doomed attempt to avenge his beloved (and perhaps out of a desire to join her). Their ghosts, the speaker tells readers, continue to act out their last meeting over and over on stormy winter nights.
In one sense, then, this poem is a tragedy, with two young lovers' lives cruelly wasted. In another, however, it's a profoundly romantic statement of the power of love. Bess and the highwayman both care more about each other than they do about their own lives, and even death can't separate them permanently.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
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The Romance of Outlawry
The hero of "The Highwayman" is a criminal, a mounted bandit—but there's no question that he's a criminal the reader is meant to root for. Based on folk heroes like Dick Turpin (a violent robber who was transformed by legend into a dashing, Robin-Hood-ish figure), this poem's highwayman expresses Noyes's romantic, nostalgic vision of an English past that never really existed. Here, it's the representatives of the law who are malicious and evil and the roving highwayman who's the true gentleman.
Readers can tell the highwayman is the hero of this piece as soon as he turns up. He's kitted out like a fine 18th-century dandy, wearing a "French cocked-hat," "a bunch of lace at his chin," and a "coat of the claret velvet." Armed robbery never looked better. This dapper gent is clearly enjoying himself, too: he's confident in his skill, certain that he'll be able to pick up a fistful or two of "yellow gold" whenever he so desires. And he's deeply in love with the beautiful Bess, the "red-lipped daughter" of a local innkeeper.
In all these qualities, the highwayman is a storybook hero, and his thieving is nothing more than derring-do and high adventure, an exercise in wits and horsemanship that the reader can admire. What's more, his nemeses—"Tim the ostler" and the "red-coat" soldiers, all above-board types doing official jobs—are uniformly presented as scoundrels, men with no sense of decency or honor. Tim is a traitor, ratting the lovers out because he is romantically interested in Bess. The soldiers, meanwhile, are out-and-out sadists, assaulting Bess and attempting to force her to watch her beloved's death.
A life of romantic outlawry, in this poem's vision, is far more respectable (and far more attractive) than the lives of people who follow the rules but have no quality of their own. The highwayman (and Bess, for that matter) are both figures whose personal virtues—devotion, passion, skill, courage—are presented as the things that really matter.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Highwayman”
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Lines 1-6
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.The first lines of "The Highwayman" set a spooky scene in the tone of a fireside story. With a vision of a highwayman (an 18th-century robber on horseback) galloping through a moonlit wood on a stormy night, the speaker prepares readers for a real yarn, a romantic tale of derring-do.
These famous first lines reveal some of the qualities that have made this poem a long-time favorite for reciting aloud. Listen to Noyes's hypnotic repetitions here:
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.First, Noyes sets the scenes with three vivid metaphors tied together with anaphora—a chant-like effect that draws readers into the poem's world. The wind is a torrent, the moon a sailing ship struggling through high seas: these stormy images foreshadow trouble to come. But then, in the midst of these images, the road lies like a moonlit "ribbon," a quiet and elegant path through the storm.
It's down this road that the highwayman makes his way. With epizeuxis on the word "riding" and a sudden transition to much shorter lines, Noyes focuses readers on the action of the galloping horseman for a moment. The effect is rather like a camera shot, holding on the main character for a long beat. It's also just plain satisfying to the ear—and to the listener's sense of drama.
Through its shape, its sounds, and its imagery, this first stanza makes it clear that readers are in for a narrative of high adventure. The choice of a highwayman as a central character suggests romance right from the get-go. Ever since Dick Turpin—a notable 18th-century English criminal whose deeds got romanticized in ballads before he was even hanged—highwaymen have been depicted as dashing outlaws in the Robin Hood mold. Alfred Noyes, writing in the early 20th century, is clearly buying right into that tradition.
He'll tell this tale over seventeen sestets (or six-line stanzas) in a driving, energetic form. While the poem doesn't stick to any one metrical foot, it keeps to the same accentual pattern: three six-beat lines, two lines of two or three beats, and a final line of six beats. The two shorter lines always use strong repetitions, including an identical rhyme (like the riding / riding rhyme here in the first stanza), and always hang for a moment on a particularly important image.
All these highly stylized formal choices help to make this poem feel like the fireside tale it is. This isn't gritty realism, the poem's artful language stresses: it's a romantic fantasy.
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Lines 7-12
He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky. -
Lines 13-18
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard.
He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair. -
Lines 19-24
And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and peaked.
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord’s daughter,
The landlord’s red-lipped daughter.
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say— -
Lines 25-36
“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”
He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west. -
Lines 37-42
He did not come in the dawning. He did not come at noon;
And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,
When the road was a gypsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching—
Marching—marching—
King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door. -
Lines 43-54
They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale instead.
But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot of her narrow bed.
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that
he
would ride.
They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest.
They had bound a musket beside her, with the muzzle beneath her breast!
“Now, keep good watch!” and they kissed her. She heard the doomed man say—
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way! -
Lines 55-66
She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!
The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for the rest.
Up, she stood up to attention, with the muzzle beneath her breast.
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love’s refrain. -
Lines 67-78
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot!
Had they heard it? The horsehoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot,
in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The red coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still.
Tlot-tlot
, in the frosty silence!
Tlot-tlot
, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer. Her face was like a light.
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death. -
Lines 79-84
He turned. He spurred to the west; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there. -
Lines 85-90
Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high.
Blood red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat. -
Lines 91-102
And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred.
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
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“The Highwayman” Symbols
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The Dark Red Love-Knot
The love-knot that Bess braids into her hair has an obvious symbolism: she herself is using it as a symbol of, well, love, a tangible expression of her feelings for her beloved highwayman. That's what love knots are for. They represent sentiments that join two people together as firmly as a knot joins two cords.
But in its passionate redness, the love-knot also ominously foreshadows the blood that Bess will willingly shed to rescue the highwayman from capture (and the blood the grief-stricken highwayman will spill in turn when he gallops off in a desperate, futile quest for vengeance). As the poem tells, the love-knot that unites the couple holds firm even beyond the grave.
In giving the symbolic love-knot so prominent a position here, Noyes is drawing on the ballad tradition. Love-knots turn up in all sorts of folk songs of doomed love.
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
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“The Highwayman” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Repetition
"The Highwayman" gets a lot of its distinctive flavor from repetition, which Noyes uses to create suspense, drama, and music suited to this romantic tale. The first stanza offers a perfect example of some of the techniques he likes best:
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.First, there's parallelism: the first three lines all use the same sentence structure, each introducing a shivery, atmospheric metaphor to set the poem's scene. The effect works a lot like a long establishing shot at the beginning of a movie. With those first three lines all feeling similar, the poem primes readers to feel excited when the main character rides onstage in line 4.
Here, Noyes deploys maybe the strongest and most distinctive flavor of repetition in the poem: diacope on "the highwayman came riding," and epizeuxis on "riding— / Riding—riding—". This dense thicket of repetitions hangs for a long moment on this image of the galloping highwayman and gives it a sheen of musical romance: these repetitions make the poem sound like an old ballad, a song as well as a story.
There's a similar ballad flavor in the repeated lines Noyes uses to describe Bess. She's always "the landlord's black-eyed daughter" or the "landlord's red-lipped daughter"—lines that emphasize both her beauty and her place in a world that isn't the highwayman's. As the "landlord's daughter," she stands in contrast to the roving highwayman: she stays in one place doing above-board work while he roams the highways thieving. By repeatedly insisting that Bess is "the landlord's daughter," Noyes highlights the Romeo-and-Juliet quality of the doomed romance.
Other repetitions help to thread important images through the story. Take the highwayman's instructions to Bess in lines 28-30:
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”Almost exactly these same words reappear in lines 52-54, when the tormented Bess remembers them. And that "moonlight" crops up over and over again all through the poem: Bess sees the road lying "bare in the moonlight," and at last "shatter[s] her breast in the moonlight." All that moonlight offers spooky atmosphere, yes. But it also illuminates the poem's tragedy. The same moonlight that the lovers hoped would shine over their reunion instead looks down on Bess's death.
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Imagery
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Metaphor
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Simile
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Alliteration
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"The Highwayman" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Torrent
- Galleon
- Moor
- Highwayman
- French cocked-hat
- Claret velvet
- Love-knot
- Stable-wicket
- Ostler
- Peaked
- Harry
- Brand
- Tawny
- Gypsy
- Red-coat troop
- King George's men
- Casement
- Sniggering jest
- Priming
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A powerful stream of wind or water.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Highwayman”
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Form
Though "The Highwayman" doesn't use the traditional ballad stanza (four lines rhymed ABCB or ABAB), it feels like an old ballad, with its highly romantic tale of midnight rides, betrayal, and doomed love. Noyes wrote the poem in 1906, and its purple moors, torrential winds, and blood-soaked romance show the stylistic influence of Romantic and Victorian literature, which reveled in similar wild landscapes and harrowing tales. But "The Highwayman" also pays homage to anonymous old songs of robbery and derring-do written much closer to the 18th century, the era when this poem takes place.
Rather than following in the formal tradition of the ballad, this narrative poem takes its own distinctive shape. It's written in 17 stanzas, each six lines long, using an AABCCB rhyme scheme and a galloping accentual meter. (More on these choices in the Meter and Rhyme Scheme sections of this guide.) This form heightens the poem's drama even further—particularly the CC couplet, which is always made of short, repetitive lines that hover suspensefully over striking (and sometimes disturbing) images.
Noyes also divides the poem into three sections, rather like chapters. The first sets up the highwayman's romance with Bess (and the ominous spying of the jealous ostler Tim). The second tells the tale of Tim's betrayal, Bess's self-sacrifice, and the highwayman's grief-maddened gallop to his own demise. A final short coda transforms the whole tale into a ghost story, reporting (in spooky italics) that the ghosts of Bess and the highwayman still meet at the inn on stormy nights. All in all, the poem's novelistic progression makes it feel as if the reader is listening in to an old tale read by the fireside.
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Meter
"The Highwayman" uses a driving accentual meter—that is, a meter measured out by number of beats per line, rather than by a regular syllable pattern (like the da-DUM of iambs or the DUM-da-da of dactyls). The first three lines of each stanza use six beats, the fourth uses two or three, the fifth uses two or three, and the sixth returns to six beats. Here's how that sounds in the second stanza:
He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.The flexibility of accentual meter feels fitting for this poem, which has rather the flavor of an old ballad: it's an organic-feeling, folksy sound, the same meter you might find in a nursery rhyme.
But there's also a fitting galloping quality to this meter. While Noyes isn't sticking closely to any one metrical foot here, he does often fall into a pattern like the beat of the horse's hooves as the "highwayman [comes] riding." The movement from the high-energy longer lines to the suspenseful, hypnotically repetitive shorter ones also suits this poem's spooky ghost-story tone.
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Rhyme Scheme
"The Highwayman" uses this steady rhyme scheme:
AABCCB
The C rhymes are all identical, using the same word (as in "But the landlord's black-eyed daughter, / Bess, the landlord's daughter" in lines 16-17). Sometimes identical rhymes cross stanzas, too: the poem returns repeatedly to the words "riding," "daughter," and "moonlight." All those repetitions give the poem a chant-like quality. In every stanza, the speaker hovers hypnotically for a moment over key words, as in:
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;These identical rhymes keep readers with an image for a long, atmospheric moment.
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“The Highwayman” Speaker
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This poem takes the tone of a fireside tale, a spooky story for the kind of dark and stormy night the speaker describes in the first lines. The speaker, then, might be imagined as a storyteller, gathering a little audience around to narrate the tragic tale of the highwayman and his beloved in a thoroughly dramatic voice.
Though the narrator feels the sorrow and horror of this tale of woe, they're also clearly enjoying telling the story. Readers can feel the narrator's relish in the poem's atmospheric repetitions ("the highwayman came riding— / Riding—riding") and lavish detail (like the highwayman's "coat of the claret velvet" and lacy cravat, or the scented "black cascade" of Bess's hair). This isn't, after all, an especially realistic story, but an unabashedly romantic one, with a ghostly Gothic shiver at the end.
Perhaps readers might see this speaker as Noyes himself, who remembered writing "The Highwayman" in a feverish two-day spell of enthusiasm as a young man in his twenties. This was the time of his life, he said, when he was "genuinely excited by that kind of romantic story." That gusto still comes through in this poem's high drama and pleasure in description.
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“The Highwayman” Setting
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The poem is set sometime in the heyday of the British highwaymen: the 18th century, when Dick Turpin roved the roads and became a folk hero. Readers can place the story in time through fashion and historical allusion. Like Turpin (or at least the legendary version of him), this poem's highwayman is a dashing fellow, a dandy wearing a tricorn hat, a lacy cravat, and a wine-red velvet coat—a look that was all the rage in the mid-18th century. And his nemeses are King George's redcoats, soldiers in the service of one of Great Britain's long series of Kings George. The poem is likely set during the reign of George II, or perhaps the early part of the reign of George III, to judge the time period by the highwayman's getup.
But while this poem has a certain historical specificity, it might be more accurate to say that it takes place in the land of story. From its wildly romantic landscape (a rustic inn in a storm-lashed English countryside) to its rogue-with-a-heart-of-gold hero, this poem has much more to do with balladry and old tales than it does with the historical reality of British highwaymen. (In this, Noyes is only following tradition: the infamous Dick Turpin himself, a violent criminal, was romanticized as a jolly Robin Hood-ish sort of figure even in his own lifetime.)
The poem's melodrama thus also feels a little wistful. Noyes first published this poem in 1906, long past the time of the highwayman. Clearly, he's relishing the idea of a romantic, ghostly past.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Highwayman”
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Literary Context
Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) was one of the most popular poets of his era. His reputation rests in no small part on "The Highwayman," a poem that became so famous that just about every British schoolchild learned it. The poem first appeared in Blackwood's magazine in 1906, and Noyes later collected it in his book Forty Singing Seamen, and Other Poems (1907).
As this poem's tone and style suggest, Noyes was more a man of the past than of his moment. He was part of the same generation as the modernists, a distinguished group of writers that included T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf. While such writers were experimenting with innovative forms and ideas, including free verse and stream-of-consciousness narratives, Noyes clung to the poetic tradition of the 19th century. His verse is more clearly influenced by writers like Tennyson and Wordsworth (two of his favorites) than by his contemporaries. In fact, he was a sworn enemy of several contemporary writers: he publicly railed against what he saw as the vulgarity, corruption, and out-and-out "filth" of James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and D.H. Lawrence.
For all that Noyes was stylistically and temperamentally a bit of a throwback, his verse tapped into the wistful sentiments of the general public, many of whom shared his sense that literature (and the world in general) were in sad decline. "The Highwayman" still ranks high among favorite British poems.
Historical Context
When Noyes published "The Highwayman" in 1906, Britain was in a wild and unpredictable moment of its history. This was just five years after the death of Queen Victoria, under whose long, long rule (nearly 64 years!) Britain had established a global empire. The Queen's death and the succession of her son Edward VII rattled the world. Just over the horizon were the horrors of World War I. But before that dreadful disillusionment, the Edwardian period was a time of loosening up, an era of experimentation and (as some, likely including Noyes himself, would say) comparative moral laxity.
Noyes's "Highwayman" captures a feeling very much of its time and place: a longing for a romanticized past in the face of rapid change. Even this poem's melodramatic violence has an old-school, ballad-like quaintness: dying "with a bunch of lace at his throat," the highwayman cuts a dashing figure even in defeat. Such romantic visions were soon to seem even more faraway next to the bleak and futile violence of World War I.
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More “The Highwayman” Resources
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External Resources
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A Brief Biography — Read the Poetry Foundation's introduction to Noyes's life and work.
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A Lighter Side of Noyes — Read another famous Noyes poem—this one with quite a different character—to get a sense of his flexible poetic voice.
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The Poem Set to Music — Watch Ipso Facto, a reggae band, performing a musical version of "The Highwayman."
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.
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Portraits of Noyes — See some images of Noyes via London's National Portrait Gallery.
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