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It is a sorrow of mine to consider that most people who speak English and who have graduated from our colleges and universities know very little of their language’s poetic heritage; a greater sorrow to consider that Christians themselves know little about it. We have had many centuries of poetic meditation upon Scripture, in our own language, but we preach and write as if it had never happened.

Let me illustrate what we might gain if we submitted to be taught by our literary forefathers. The verse I have in mind is powerful and mysterious. “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,” says St. Paul. “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:2-3). We should not take the easy way out and say that Paul is merely engaging in a metaphor here, as that we have “died to ourselves,” learning to be less selfish, to volunteer at the local soup kitchen, and to hug small children. He really does mean that we have died in Christ, and that our lives now spring from a new root, and so we can say truly that we do not live, but that Christ lives in us: Christ our life.

But such new life is also somehow hidden, because we still move and act in the world about us, and that we long for things above is not going to be apparent to those who do not know that there is an “above” at all. How do you explain greenness to the color-blind? In some ways that new life will be hidden even from our own eyes, because the action of grace is like yeast in the dough, silent, invisible. Recall that when the blessed are brought before Christ their judge, they will say, “Lord, when were you hungry, and we gave you to eat?” — as if even they were unaware of the good they have done, as painful as may be their memories of sin.

Then let the poet George Herbert, whom I consider to be the greatest lyric poet in English, show us what this hidden life is like. Our Poetry Aloud selection this week is simply called “Colossians 3:3,” and it is headed with the verse, Our life is hid with Christ in God. The spacing and the italics are intentional:

My words and thoughts do both express this notion,

That Life hath with the sun a double motion.

The first Is straight, and our diurnal friend,

The other Hid and doth obliquely bend.

One life is wrapped In flesh, and tends to earth:

The other winds towards Him, whose happy birth

Taught me to live here so, That still one eye

Should aim and shoot at that which Is on high:

Quitting with daily labour all My pleasure,

To gain at harvest an eternal Treasure.

The simile that governs the poem is a little tricky to explain to people who no longer have to observe the path of the sun from hour to hour and from day to day. The sun, we know, rises in the east and sets in the west. That is the “straight” motion, the “diurnal friend” that bends toward earth. It is common among all human cultures to compare the life of man to a single day: think of the bittersweet song “Sunrise, Sunset.” The flesh ages and must die. But there is a second motion of the sun, one that is impossible to perceive in the hour.

It is a spiraling or winding motion, as Herbert puts it. Suppose we are in the northern hemisphere, and we begin on the shortest day of the year. The sun does not rise due east, but southeast, and the higher we are in the latitudes towards the pole, the farther south it will be, and to the same degree it sets southwest, traveling a very short arc and not rising high in the sky. But as it moves – I am speaking of the path we observe, which is owing to the tilt of the earth on its axis and its revolution around the sun – it spirals, rising farther to the east with each day and setting farther to the west, making a longer and a higher arc, till finally, on the longest day of the year, it rises northeast and travels all the way around east and south and west, to set northwest, and its noon is as high in the sky as it will ever be, at that latitude.

So the Christian life, says Herbert, has that double motion also, the one that is easily observable, but the other hidden. The hidden one spirals day by day upward – towards the peak. Of course he is not supposing that we will then fall back into a spiritual winter, and in this way our lives are not like the seasonal spiraling of the sun. We are moving toward a great summer harvest. We labor here, we “quit” our daily pleasures, “to gain at harvest an eternal Treasure.” Herbert is thinking of the parable of the man who found a treasure in a field, and went and sold all he had to purchase that field. The kingdom of God, says Jesus, is like that – a hidden thing, what the world overlooks, an “unconsidered trifle,” to use the apt words of Shakespeare. But the treasure is priceless. So the Christian lives, as it were, a diagonal life, in the world but not of it, moving with the flesh but also crossing it, cutting athwart it, and this in a quiet but constant way, ever with an eye toward “that which is on high.”

And what is the substance of this treasure? Once, near the end of his life, Thomas Aquinas heard in prayer the voice of God, saying, “Thomas, you have written well of me. What do you desire for a reward?” Thomas replied, “Thee alone, Lord.” That is the astonishing promise that God holds forth for the faithful soul. “My spirit longs for thee, within my troubled breast,” says one old and venerable and largely forgotten hymn. “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee,” says Augustine. “Jesus, priceless treasure,” we sing in the magnificent Bach oratorio. And in this poem Herbert reveals to us in the diagonal, in words otherwise hidden, what is true of his life and what he longs for as the summit and perfection of that life: My life is hid in Him that is my Treasure.

Each of those words is exactly where it should be: the first is the first syllable of 10 in the first line of the 10-line poem, the second word is the second syllable of 10 in the second line, and so forth, until the 10th syllable in the 10th line, that which begins the final and climactic word, treasure.

That’s just one small and winsome example of what Christian artists used to do, in meditating upon the word of God. Let us go and learn from them.

This text of this podcast was originally published in Inside the Vatican.

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymn, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. To support this project, please join us as a subscriber.

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Given the snowy “spell” we have had this week here in the US, we’ve decided to revisit an enchanting poem by the wonderful Whittier. (Please excuse the occasional “commentary” from our little puppy, Molly, who kept trying to get into the act as Tony recorded this episode.)

For our snow week, we’ve got John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem of reminiscence, abo…

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So at least they did before Oliver Cromwell and his parliament abolished the feast day in 1644 — but the feast was restored with King Charles II in 1660. Why, William Bradford, a man I deeply admire, wouldn’t have the men of Plymouth who were not in the Mayflower congregation play skittles outdoors on Christmas — he told them that if they wanted to keep the day holy, they should do that in a sober manner indoors. But the author of our Poem of the Week, Henry Vaughan, writing in 1650, was all for celebrating the day and the season too. He doesn’t actually mention the evergreen tree, but that’s because it seems that the whole world, in the celebration of Christmas, is green. It’s not winter, it’s not cold, it’s not barren, we’re not indulging in pity for the Christ child. Not at all! The sun is shining — in a most daring image, he shakes his long locks and fills the world with light. He breathes spices, the woods are ringing with the song of birds, and the springs, the brooks and creeks, make up a “consort,” that is, a harmony with the birds, while Man, high priest to all the world, should come forth to offer the joyful sacrifice of praise.

There’s one way in which our poem today is like what we’ve seen two weeks ago from George Herbert, whose work Vaughan knew and loved, though Herbert died when Vaughan was just on the verge of manhood. Both poets think about the inn that had no room for the Holy Family, and instead of turning that matter into something political or social, they interpret it personally. Where should the Child find room? In my heart! But he’s got to clean up that place first. Was the manger lowly? Was it sort of dusty and musty, what with all the animals? It was clean as a whistle, compared with my heart! Unsightly, was it? Hardly — but my heart, says Vaughan, isn’t fit to be viewed on stage (that’s what the word “obscene” means, literally, and that’s how we’re to take it here). Was that birth miraculous? Yes, it was! But Vaughan calls for an even more miraculous birth. Let the Child be born in us today.

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Awake, glad heart! get up, and Sing,
It is the Birth-day of thy King,
     Awake! awake!
     The Sun doth shake
Light from his locks, and all the way
Breathing Perfumes, doth spice the day.

Awake, awake! hark, how th' wood rings,
Winds whisper, and the busy springs
     A Consort make;
     Awake, awake!
Man is their high priest, and should rise
To offer up the sacrifice.

I would I were some Bird, or Star,
Fluttering in woods, or lifted far
     Above this Inn
     And Road of sin!
Then either Star or Bird should be
Shining or singing still to thee.

I would I had in my best part
Fit Rooms for thee! or that my heart
     Were so clean as
     Thy manger was!
But I am all filth, and obscene,
Yet, if thou wilt, thou canst make clean.

Sweet Jesu! will then; let no more
This Leper haunt and soil thy door,
     Cure him, Ease him,
     O release him!
And let once more by mystic birth
The Lord of life be born in Earth.

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen

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Dear Readers: If you want to hear some of my poetry, and learn about the writing of it, give a listen to the podcast below. And if you like what you hear about the work, please consider purchasing a copy of The Hundredfold — for yourself or for a friend, or perhaps for your pastor. Our cherished hope is for The Hundredfold to reach as wide an audience as possible.

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For the past few seasons, during Advent at Word & Song and again during Eastertide, I’ve been recording readings from The Hundredfold. This year’s addition to the list is a Christmas hymn, set to the melody Coelites Plaudant. We’ve provided a link to an organ-only performance of this tune for anyone who would like to try singing it to an accompaniment.

Some of you may notice that this hymn doesn’t rhyme. In fact, all of the 54 hymns I’ve written rhyme, except for this one, but that’s because this one uses the 11-11-11-5 meter of the ancient Sapphic stanza, to which English poets have sometimes added rhyme but sometimes not. The hymn I know best in this melody, “Christ the Fair Glory of the Holy Angels,” doesn’t. Instead, please observe the strong break in the middle of the three long lines, and the emphatic DUM-da-da-DUM-da in the final line. The hymn itself is for the Annunciation, but that’s one of the Advent gospels too, so it works also during this time.

TUNE: COELITES PLAUDANT

This is the first day / of the new creation,
When the Almighty / comes to dwell among us,
Light in the darkness, / while the sons of morning
Break forth in chorus.

Our fleshly mother / stole the fruit forbidden,
Whence we were driven / from the holy garden;
Ours was a dark world, / fruitful and yet barren,
Vast, and a prison.

Then came the angel / bearing word to Mary,
And she, obedient, / took the seed within her,
Gave the Almighty / her most holy shelter,
Maiden and Mother.

Infinite riches / in the second Eden!
The Word incarnate, / cast upon the waters,
Comes to bring morning / from the womb of Mary,
Break open heaven.

© Anthony Esolen

Please note that I own the copyright to my hymns, which may be used only with my written permission and with proper attribution.

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Alas, Tony has had a relapse of his recent illness, and so for today we are revisiting “Jabberwocky” for our Poetry Aloud. But this time we have a special “guest” reader — Sir John Gielgud!

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What a fine thing language is — boundlessly inventive, fanciful, jesting, sometimes as sharp as a spear or a shaft of light, sometimes meditative, like an afternoon in Indian-summer with the tang of ripening apples in the air, and sometimes vague, dim, suggestive, like a whisper in the night. People say it’s the most powerful tool man has made. Not so fast, not so fast! It’s more than a tool. It is a power of the human soul, encountering the mystery of itself, and other souls, the wide world around us, and the far wider world within us. Can you weave a spell? Sure you can. A little child asks for a story, and you glance up and to your right — which is where stories are located — and you say, “Once upon a time,” and a world comes into being. Only you don’t tell the child that. You say that once upon a time a girl named Alice went down a rabbit-hole, or somehow ended up on the opposite side of a looking-glass, and there you have it, or it has you.

You may say, “Well, but we do depend on words already invented,” so we’re bound by language. As much as to say that you’re chained by your legs, because you have to use them to walk into the fields! But the thing is, we invent words all the time, and people can get them without a dictionary, so long as they can recognize the forms. Language then is our sport, a kind of universal musical instrument with strings, pipes, stops, whistles, reeds, steel bars, jugs, rattles, skins, crystal glasses, bells, bags, bellows, and horns, and many a slight and slender thing that sounds and has no name.

Listen to the fine actor John Gielgud read Lewis Carroll’s delightful poem, “Jabberwocky.” Try to read it aloud yourself, if you can! It’s what got Alice through the looking-glass, and it’s all nonsense — except, you know, we do make sense of it. I don’t know that I want to be around “slithy toves,” which to my ear (though not to Humpty’s, who explains it to Alice) sound like water-lilies that are slippery, like the inside of okra. But I sure would like a “vorpal blade,” because if it’s as vorpal as the poem says, it can cut through anything, “snicker-snack!” What a “frabjous day” that would be. Other blades may be mimsy. Or worse — they frittle when you strike something really stranch, like a graniment or an iron galt. If it’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a frittly blade when I’ve got an iron galt to deal with. It’s enough to make a guy go jub-jub.

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Click on the image above to hear Sir John Gielgud read our Poetry Aloud!

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
      And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
      The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
      Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
      And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
      The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
      And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
      The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
      He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
      Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
      He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
      And the mome raths outgrabe.

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So the surprise here is that the Lilliputians actually have some wise laws. Whether they would work as laws isn’t so much the point, as is the moral insight that they embody. Why should fraud be punished worse than robbery? Why should ingratitude to a benefactor be a capital crime? Why should people of uncertain morals never be admitted to public office, and why, if they are possessed of great intelligence, does that make matters even worse?

Enjoy the “travel”!

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When we last left our hero Gulliver, he’d been shipwrecked, but he managed to swim to an island, and when he woke up, he found himself strapped to the ground by hundreds of strings, with a small army — a very small army, as it turns out, not in number but in size — of human creatures no more than six inches tall, ready to fire their arrows into his face and his eyes. Now the question for the tiny people of Lilliput is, “What shall we do with him?” And here’s where Swift’s satire against human folly and presumption kicks into gear. We’ve got a situation we haven’t foreseen. What to do? It’s a question we often face, but people in authority face it all the time. There’s the right thing, and then there’s what we can get away with, or what we think we can get away with. Let’s see then how the Lilliputians begin to treat the Man-Mountain, as they call Gulliver!

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Today is the 3rd anniversary of our launch of Word & Song! We wish all of you a very happy and enjoyable Independence Day!

Last summer, many of you joined us for a weekly visit with Huckleberry Finn, which I read in its entirety. (Paid subscribers may find all of those readings in our archive.) This summer, we are offering another special Poetry Aloud series. On Fridays in July and August, I’ll be reading to you not a work of poetry, but “The Voyage to Lilliput,” Book One of the most brilliant of all English satires, Gulliver’s Travels. For this week’s podcast, we’re setting sail with Gulliver, who is the only survivor of a shipwreck in the East Indies. When he wakes up, he’s flat on the ground, on his back, and he’s tied to the ground by dozens of — strings. That’s right, not ropes, but strings!

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Imagine a person six inches tall, pretending to be the Lord of the earth, posing in regal attire while he presumes to rule over his fellows as he pleases, because, after all, he’s a full half inch bigger than everybody else! Swift takes our pretensions to worldly greatness, as light and empty as a balloon — and pop! with one touch of his pen, they come to nothing. Enjoy this voyage into human folly. Gulliver’s Travels is in one way or another like other tales of voyages to strange places. But nothing in English literature is like Gulliver’s Travels.

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Now then — surely modern life doesn’t show us anything like Swift’s fanciful accounts of voyages to the South Seas, where you meet little human beings six inches high, but just as arrogant as us six-footers everywhere else! (Or does it?) Listen in, and I’ll see if I can show you otherwise. For we do have those voyages, as we navigate the ocean of life. Whether they’re as brilliant and as revealing about human nature as Swift’s was, you’ll have to decide for yourselves. For this summer, then, pack up the hardtack and the biscuit and the lemons, because we’re going to be setting sail.

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Note: Our full archive of over 1,000 posts, videos, audios is available on demand to paid subscribers. We know that not everyone has time every day for a read and a listen. So we have built the archive with our readers in mind. Free subscribers have access to a good number of our most recent posts. Please do browse, and please do share posts that you like with others.

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Debra and I and our daughter Jessica plant gardens wherever we go. It’s in our nature. When we lived in the city of Providence for six years, we had a small fenced-in back yard, an eight-by-four-foot plot by the front porch, and a narrow strip on our shady side between our sidewalk and the neighbor’s. We put in flowers wherever we could, I built an arbor as an “entry” to the back yard, and when the city decided to plant elm trees along our street in front of the houses, Debra asked me to build a little square picket fence around ours, to protect it from cars (and sure enough, somebody did ram the fence but missed the tree because of it). Many years later, we see that ours was the only tree that survived on the whole block.

"My love is a garden enclosed,” says the Bridegroom in the Song of Songs, and that’s an image of Paradise — and by the way, our word paradise comes from the Romans, who got it from the Greeks, who got it from the Persians; yes, it’s an ancient Persian word. Remember, though, that Persian is in our big family of languages; a distant cousin of English, and no cousin at all of Hebrew or Arabic. Anyway, the word itself refers to such a garden, enclosed, protected. But here we are, frail and faulty human beings, longing for Paradise, when half the time we’re trying to raise some distant image of a paradise here in this life, and the other half the time we’re tearing down what we’ve done.

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But as Herbert’s poem reminds us, we’re not the ultimate gardeners. God is. We instead are like flowers in the garden. But what does that suggest, here, now? Flowers do not always bloom. Some flowers, like lilies or tulips, seem to die all the way back down into the ground after they’ve bloomed, living still but quietly, in a sort of suspended state, in the bulbs under the earth. Flowers are subject to cold and heat and storms. They need water, they need sunlight, they need — we need the tending hand of God. So then, Herbert compares his life with that of a flower, but it’s by no means an easy life. The hand of God works wonders, killing and bringing again to life, leading the soul through its joy and its sadness, through periods of sweetness and of drought, teaching us throughout these times that, as the poet says, “we are but flowers that glide.” Indeed, all the great writers on the spiritual life agree that those times of drought are when the soul can grow most strong; patience is all. The poem ends with a promise and a warning. If we “would be more,” that is, if we pretend that we are not just flowers that pass away, if we are “swelling through store,” meaning that we are swelling with pride because we think we enjoy a perfect abundance of all that life can give, we forfeit our place in the true and only Paradise.

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   How Fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring,
   To which, besides their own demesne,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
      Grief melts away
      Like snow in May,
   As if there were no such cold thing.

   Who would have thought my shriveled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
   Quite under ground, as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown;
      Where they together
      All the hard weather,
   Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

   These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell
   And up to heaven in an hour;
Making a chiming of a passing-bell.
      We say amiss,
      This or that is:
   Thy word is all, if we could spell.

   O that I once past changing were;
Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!
   Many a spring I shoot up fair,
Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither:
      Nor doth my flower       
      Want a spring-shower,
   My sins and I joining together.

   But while I grow to a straight line,
Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own,
   Thy anger comes, and I decline.
What frost to that? what pole is not the zone
      Where all things burn,
      When thou dost turn,
And the least frown of thine is shown?

   And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
   I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my only light,
      It cannot be
      That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night.

   These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide:
   Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide.
      Who would be more,
      Swelling through store,
   Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

Note: Our full archive of over 1,000 posts, videos, audios is available on demand to paid subscribers. We know that not everyone has time every day for a read and a listen. So we have built the archive with our readers in mind. Free subscribers have access to a good number of our most recent posts. Please do browse, and please do share posts that you like with others.

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Don’t press the poem for more than it offers. It’s not a course in moral philosophy! Our hearts are meant to be with the bold and dashing highwayman, and with the brave Bess, not with King George’s sour and somewhat boorish soldiers, and not with the sly Tim the Ostler, half mad with frustrated love and envy. Noyes meant it to be read aloud, and he composed it when he was a young man on the desolate Surrey downs, with the idea of just such a wild adventure stirring his imagination.

And here is one, I think, to have the kids perform. Think of it as a bit of the swashbuckling Rafael Sabatini, in those strangely innocent books of his, about Captain Blood, the Scotsman and doctor who became a pirate, or Scaramouche, the fugitive from the French Revolution who became a clown and a master of the rapier. Or don’t think of it at all, but enjoy the music, because there sure is a lot of it to enjoy.

PART ONE

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.   
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.   
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,   
And the highwayman came riding—
         Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,   
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.   
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
         His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard.
He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.   
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there   
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
         Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and peaked.   
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,   
But he loved the landlord’s daughter,
         The landlord’s red-lipped daughter.
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,   
Then look for me by moonlight,
         Watch for me by moonlight,
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”

He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;   
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
         (O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.

PART TWO

He did not come in the dawning. He did not come at noon;   
And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,   
When the road was a gypsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor,   
A red-coat troop came marching—
         Marching—marching—
King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale instead.   
But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot of her narrow bed.
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!   
There was death at every window;
         And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest.
They had bound a musket beside her, with the muzzle beneath her breast!
“Now, keep good watch!” and they kissed her. She heard the doomed man say— Look for me by moonlight;
         Watch for me by moonlight;
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!   
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
         Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for the rest.   
Up, she stood up to attention, with the muzzle beneath her breast.   
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;   
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
         Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love’s refrain.

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horsehoofs ringing clear;   
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding—
         Riding—riding—
The red coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still.

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!   
Nearer he came and nearer. Her face was like a light.
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,   
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
         Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.

He turned. He spurred to the west; he did not know who stood   
Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own blood!   
Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear   
How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
         The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high.
Blood red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;
When they shot him down on the highway,
         Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.

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.

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred.   
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there   
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
         Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

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