The Highwayman

The Highwayman Is a wonderful love poem. The author Alfred Noyes wrote a amazing love poem. Sort of like a play. There was tragedy, love story, a story to tell. This poem is a masterpiece. It has amazing poetic devices. They help you get the meaning of the poem. It is about a young woman who is the landlord’s daughter, a highwayman, soldiers, and a ostler named Tim. Bess, the landlord’s daughter is in love with the highwayman. He meets her every night at the Inn. One night Tim, the ostler is listening to them meet. The highwayman said he was after his prize but he would be back. The next day soldiers marched into the Inn. The put a gun at her breast and tied her up. They waited on both sides of the window waiting for the highwayman. When the highwayman comes close she gets her hand free and kills herself, to warn him. He flees and found out she died. Then he ran back to the soldiers and fought them. He ended up dead.

Alfred Noyes used metaphors and similes often. A metaphor is, “His eyes were hollows of madness.” The metaphor says his eyes look all crazy, like he has gone mad. He used a metaphor there to be real descriptive. He made it vivid in your head. He said they were hollows of madness to show how jealous Tim was of the highwayman. Alfred also uses similes. Such as, “His face burnt like a
He described it so much, that you could see it in your head. You got this really vivid image. One use of imagery is, “Blood-red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat.” It makes you see all the blood on his clothes. It was red and slick. He lay so still in all of it. Dirt mixed with the mud and made it dark and murky. His wealthy looking clothes looked unreal. It seemed as though he was shot down in an unreal place. The imagery made him look like he was out of place. Imagery makes poems seem real, but unreal at the same time. Imagery is a good poetic device to help them see an invisible picture in their