The Highwayman

“The Highwayman” opens with vivid and haunting imagery personifying natural elements: The wind moves like “a torrent of darkness” (Line 1) among the trees, the moon is “a ghostly galleon” (Line 2) being tossed like a ship among the fast-moving clouds in the night sky, and the road stretches out like “a ribbon of moonlight” (Line 3) across purple hills. These natural elements come to life through such vivid metaphors, suggesting the danger, beauty, and adventure of the love to come in the following stanzas. Emerging from these romantic natural elements, the Highwayman himself appears, directly riding to his love.

In the second stanza, the highwayman is described as well-dressed and glamorous. He has a “French cocked-hat” (Line 7) and “lace at his chin” (Line 7), along with a coat in a rich, almost blood-like shade of “claret velvet” (Line 8), and breeches made of soft “brown doe-skin” (Line 8) with “never a wrinkle” (Line 9). In short, the hero of the poem is elegant and stylish and Noyes plays with the repeated sounds of “with a jeweled twinkle” (Line 10), “His pistol butts a-twinkle” (Line 11), and “His rapier hilt a-twinkle” (Line 12) as the highwayman rides under a similarly “jeweled sky” (Line 12).