22 pages • 44 minutes read
Alfred NoyesThe Highwayman
Fiction | Poem | Middle Grade | Published in 1906A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
“The Highwayman” is a ballad-poem written in 102 lines grouped into 17 stanzas. The poem is divided into two parts, with a closing two-stanza epilogue at the end. The poem’s meter generally follows a pattern consistent with the ballad form, using hexameters of six metric feet per line. The rhythm, however, alternates depending on the line—sometimes using iambs, where an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable, and sometimes using anapests, where two unstressed syllables are followed by a stressed syllable. For example, Line 37 features both iambs and anapests, but remains a hexameter despite the variation:
“He did | not come | in the dawn- | ing. He did | not come | at noon; (Line 37)
The poem’s rhyme scheme follows a traditional pattern through to the end. Each stanza follows an AABCCB rhyme scheme with no variation throughout. Noyes repeats particular “CC” group rhymes across stanzas, such as “moonlight” (Stanzas 5, 6, 9, 11, 13), “daughter” (Stanzas 3, 4, 14, 17) and “riding” (Stanzas 1, 12, 16), adding to the sing-song effect of the ballad form.
Alliteration
Throughout the poem, Noyes uses moments of alliteration to add rhythm to the ballad poem, and to make it an enjoyable piece to read, hear, and/or perform. Noyes’s use of alliteration creates vivid images like the “ghostly galleon” (Line 2), and the repeated “r” sounds of “road was a ribbon,” (Line 3) “riding— / riding—riding—” (Lines 4-5) make for a rousing opening to the poem.
This continues throughout the poem, where Noyes groups specific sounds to enhance the tone of each stanza. In the third stanza, for example, he uses the hard “c” sound when the Highwayman arrives noisily at the inn: “Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed” (Line 13). The use of sibilance in stanza eight has the opposite effect as Bess quietly tries to escape the knots, the hissing repetition of the soft “s” in “twisted” (Line 55), “sweat” (Line 56), “stretched and strained” (Line 57), “stroke” (Lines 58-59), and “at least” (Line 60) sounds like a whisper.
Repetition
Noyes’s use of repetition in many ways in “The Highwayman” to bring special emphasis to certain lines, to recall earlier moments and promises, and to provide moments of dramatic irony as the poem continues towards its conclusion. This often features within the same stanza, such as “And he rode with a jewelled [sic] twinkle, / His pistol butts a-twinkle, / His rapier hilt a-twinkle” (Lines 10-12) to emphasize the musical rhythm of the text, but in this case, also to augment the image of a dazzling and dapper highwayman dressed to the nines to meet his love.
Certain images are repeated throughout the poem, such as “moonlight” (Line 3), “ribbon” (Line 3), and “long black hair” (Line 18), among many others; several of these images appear in different contexts. For example, the appearance of the “bunch of lace at his chin” (Line 7) as the highwayman goes to meet his love takes on a different significance when “a bunch of lace at his throat” (Line 90) reappears again alongside the image of him lying in a pool of his own blood.
Finally, the poem opens and closes with the same imagery, repeating the encounter between the lovers while they are alive, and then again when they are ghosts. This repetition revives this idealized moment, bringing them back from their tragic death as local folklore and giving the lovers a haunting, eternal reunion. In the final epilogue, the first and third stanzas of the poem are repeated, almost word for word, but shift the voice from the past-tense of the first stanzas, to the present-day voice of the nameless “they” (Line 91) who tell this tale. In doing so, the re-telling brings the story into the present of the reader, where Bess and the higwayman’s eternal love endures on these winter nights.
