A desperate love affair with The Highwayman
My grandmother is a grade school teacher—tall, thin, proper, with neat hair and a voice that can stop a rowdy child dead in his tracks—it stopped me often enough. She uses adverbs, and she always insists that "you don't have to help with the dishes, you get to help with the dishes." A privilege.
When I was young, she worked at a grade school out in the country—I visited a few times, many, many years ago, before I was in kindergarten. Most of a lifetime ago, for me. I don't remember much, just a few moments—here and there, things we did. I guess they aren't that important... not to this post, at any rate.
Grandmother (she has always been Grandmother, never 'grandma' or any other variant on the title), when she worked at that school, would sometimes bring home old books and magazines—textbooks that were being replaced, educational periodicals that weren't being saved in the library archives any longer. (Before I was eight years old, I had read every issue of Cricket published between 1975 and 1987.)
She often offered these books to my family, and we often (perhaps to my father's chagrin) accepted them. I no longer remember how old I was—third grade, perhaps? Fourth?—when I took home the literature textbooks. There were two, comparable to the literature book I would have in seventh grade: thick, heavy, hardbound, with a dozen names scrawled in the inside cover. That summer, they were my treasures. I devoured them quickly, tearing through at a breakneck pace, perhaps in the space of a few afternoons.
But it was through the second reading, and the third, and the fourth, that I fell in love. I would take the books out—one more often than the other, because it had a handful more pieces that I really enjoyed—and turn to the pages I loved best. I would read the poem (or short story) slowly, or quickly, again and again. I would read it out loud, listening to the words as I spoke them. I would act out scenes, dancing around my room—a dramatic interpretation of The Ransom of Red Chief, a breathless, stilted tribute to ee cummings.
One of the works with which I fell in love (and I love it still) was "The Highwayman," by Alfred Noyes.
I lack the words with which to express the haunting, profound effect this poem had on me as a young girl. At the risk of being painfully redundant, I fell in love. Each word seemed perfect—dooming, dramatic, perfect in rhythm, lilt, and rhyme. I read it aloud, again and again—sometimes as much as ten times in a row, start to finish, over and over. I locked myself in my room, sitting up on the top bunk of the beds I shared with my sister, sitting with the book that housed the love song of a poem.
I took the book and read out loud, pacing around my room, a dramatic reading. Reading it again and again, listening to the lilt and music of the words, I quickly memorised the poem—not intentionally, but easily. Each stanza memorised, I left the book open on my bed—always open to the pages of the poem, even if I never glanced at it. I ran about my room, from bed to desk to window to door, playing out each role. An emotional, physical, exhausting, thrilling, soul-baring tribute to a star-crossed love story.
I want to write it here, at least a stanza—but I've spent the last several slow moments of my life wondering which stanza to choose, and I'm at a loss. There are, I confess, stanzas that I adore slightly more than others, but the impact is lost without the verses that come before... and to type the entirety of the poem here, I admit, might be akin to overkill. So, I suppose, I redirect you to this page, which I encourage you to read aloud. (Imagine, perhaps, when you are done: a too-hot summer afternoon in Wisconsin; the upstairs, east-facing room of an un-airconditioned house; and a pale, skinny ten-year-old girl with waist-length brown hair, putting her soul into a dramatic reading of the poem.)
Last week, a friend gave me a collection of music that he recommended. One of the songs included was a reading of The Highwayman (I nearly asked him to marry me, but that's beside the point); I've put it up for you to listen. I could listen to it for hours—I have listened to it for hours. It's beautiful.
This poem amazes me. Even today, years after my first encounter with it, there is a non-negligible portion of my soul devoted to heart-skipping, breath-stopping, hand-on-the-heart, head-over-heels love for "The Highwayman."
When I was young, she worked at a grade school out in the country—I visited a few times, many, many years ago, before I was in kindergarten. Most of a lifetime ago, for me. I don't remember much, just a few moments—here and there, things we did. I guess they aren't that important... not to this post, at any rate.
Grandmother (she has always been Grandmother, never 'grandma' or any other variant on the title), when she worked at that school, would sometimes bring home old books and magazines—textbooks that were being replaced, educational periodicals that weren't being saved in the library archives any longer. (Before I was eight years old, I had read every issue of Cricket published between 1975 and 1987.)
She often offered these books to my family, and we often (perhaps to my father's chagrin) accepted them. I no longer remember how old I was—third grade, perhaps? Fourth?—when I took home the literature textbooks. There were two, comparable to the literature book I would have in seventh grade: thick, heavy, hardbound, with a dozen names scrawled in the inside cover. That summer, they were my treasures. I devoured them quickly, tearing through at a breakneck pace, perhaps in the space of a few afternoons.
But it was through the second reading, and the third, and the fourth, that I fell in love. I would take the books out—one more often than the other, because it had a handful more pieces that I really enjoyed—and turn to the pages I loved best. I would read the poem (or short story) slowly, or quickly, again and again. I would read it out loud, listening to the words as I spoke them. I would act out scenes, dancing around my room—a dramatic interpretation of The Ransom of Red Chief, a breathless, stilted tribute to ee cummings.
One of the works with which I fell in love (and I love it still) was "The Highwayman," by Alfred Noyes.
I lack the words with which to express the haunting, profound effect this poem had on me as a young girl. At the risk of being painfully redundant, I fell in love. Each word seemed perfect—dooming, dramatic, perfect in rhythm, lilt, and rhyme. I read it aloud, again and again—sometimes as much as ten times in a row, start to finish, over and over. I locked myself in my room, sitting up on the top bunk of the beds I shared with my sister, sitting with the book that housed the love song of a poem.
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance—were they deaf that they did not hear?
I took the book and read out loud, pacing around my room, a dramatic reading. Reading it again and again, listening to the lilt and music of the words, I quickly memorised the poem—not intentionally, but easily. Each stanza memorised, I left the book open on my bed—always open to the pages of the poem, even if I never glanced at it. I ran about my room, from bed to desk to window to door, playing out each role. An emotional, physical, exhausting, thrilling, soul-baring tribute to a star-crossed love story.
I want to write it here, at least a stanza—but I've spent the last several slow moments of my life wondering which stanza to choose, and I'm at a loss. There are, I confess, stanzas that I adore slightly more than others, but the impact is lost without the verses that come before... and to type the entirety of the poem here, I admit, might be akin to overkill. So, I suppose, I redirect you to this page, which I encourage you to read aloud. (Imagine, perhaps, when you are done: a too-hot summer afternoon in Wisconsin; the upstairs, east-facing room of an un-airconditioned house; and a pale, skinny ten-year-old girl with waist-length brown hair, putting her soul into a dramatic reading of the poem.)
Last week, a friend gave me a collection of music that he recommended. One of the songs included was a reading of The Highwayman (I nearly asked him to marry me, but that's beside the point); I've put it up for you to listen. I could listen to it for hours—I have listened to it for hours. It's beautiful.
This poem amazes me. Even today, years after my first encounter with it, there is a non-negligible portion of my soul devoted to heart-skipping, breath-stopping, hand-on-the-heart, head-over-heels love for "The Highwayman."
And still of 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 ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
Comments
My mind has always obscured “The Highwayman” a bit. I don’t know why I always have a ghastly image of two decaying specters caught up in a gory eternal reenactment. And it isn’t just at the end of the poem that the sense of macabre takes me, it is throughout its entirety.
Even that though, isn't as creepy as calling your grandmother "grandmother". I don't know why I find that erie but I do.:( How come you are not online so I can im you? Sadness.
I envy you, Sara. =)