The Highwayman

With “The Highwayman,” Noyes explores love, illustrating a form of idealized devotion, but exploring the danger of love as well. At the heart of the poem is the love between Bess and the highwayman: They secretly court by night and although the highwayman is a bandit, he nonetheless behaves like a gentleman, kissing her hair as he cannot reach her lips. This flirtation later becomes deadly when their love is put to the test. Bess is willing to die to save her beloved, just as the highwayman essentially dies by suicide of grief, as he attacks the troops with no real hope of defeating them. Their love is defined by passion, loyalty, and immortality, as they are last pictured forever bound together as ghosts trapped in their final moments together. This idealized love is eternal; it is more powerful than the King’s authority and even death—forever tied to the moors, the moon, and the road on which the highwayman lived his life.

However, while Noyes romanticizes love in the first part of the poem and explores the depth of that love in the second part, he likewise tempers such idealization with the danger love poses. Love makes the couple vulnerable and desperate to hold on to their love in the face of loss.