This poem has been singing itself inside my head for the past few weeks. I’ve been playing a lot of cards and listening to a lot of music and typing out a lot of words, and all those things have a rhythm to them –the shuffling of the cards, the beat of the music, the way the right word against another right word can turn a sentence into a song– and this poem is all rhythm, so maybe that’s why. But every time this poem comes into my head, my grandfather also comes into my head. He was a farmer who didn’t finish high school (maybe he didn’t even go to high school, I’m not sure), but he knew a bunch of poetry by heart, and sometimes he would pull us onto his lap and recite it to us. This is the exact kind of poem, old-school and with that gallop behind the lines, that he would have recited. My grandfather wore blue coveralls in the barn, and a sharp suit and hat when he went out, and he was tall and lean and goodlooking, and I still miss him.
The Highwayman
by Alfred Noyes

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Hallo Alison,
I may not be blogging now but I still read your blog. This poem is a favourite of mine too. My Dad knows it by heart and when we were little would recite the whole poem as a bedtime story. I loved it then and still do. The rhythm can be helpful to induce little children to sleep!
Have you heard Loreena McKennitt sing the poem? Beautiful
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beautiful!! I love it. I’ve never read this before and it creates beautiful images in my head 🙂
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