"The Highwayman" is reputed to be "the best ballad poem in existence for oral delivery". 'The Highwayman' suggested itself to me one blustery night when the sound of the wind in the pines gave me the first line." The poem was completed in about two days. In his autobiography, he recalled: "Bagshot Heath in those days was a wild bit of country, all heather and pinewoods. The poem was written on the edge of a desolate stretch of land known as Bagshot Heath in Surrey, where Noyes, then aged 24, had taken rooms in a cottage. In the final stanza, the ghosts of the lovers meet again on winter nights. Learning of her death, he is killed in a futile attempt at revenge ("so they shot him down on the highway, like a dog upon the highway"). Betrayed to the authorities by Tim, a jealous ostler, the highwayman escapes ambush when Bess sacrifices her life to warn him. The poem, set in 18th-century rural England, tells the story of an unnamed highwayman who is in love with Bess, a landlord's daughter. In 1995 it was voted 15th in the BBC's poll for "The Nation's Favourite Poems".
The following year it was included in Noyes' collection, Forty Singing Seamen and Other Poems, becoming an immediate success. " The Highwayman" is a romantic ballad and narrative poem written by Alfred Noyes, first published in the August 1906 issue of Blackwood's Magazine, based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
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