"And still on a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees, When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, When the road is a gypsy's ribbon looping the purple moor, The highwayman comes riding..." In Alfred Noye's thrilling poem, charged with drama and tension, we ride with the Highwayman and recoil from the terrible fate that befalls him and his sweetheart Bess, the landlord's black-eyed daughter. 'The Highwayman' is a narrative poem written by Alfred Noyes, first published in the August 1906 issue of Blackwood's Magazine, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The following year it was included in Noyes' collection, 'Forty Singing Seamen and Other Poems', becoming a success almost immediately.