3315
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
3316
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.
3317
He turned. He spurred to the west; he did not know who stood
-“BB”-
3318
Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own blood!
3319
Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear
3320
How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
3321
The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
3322
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.
3323
Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
3324
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high.
3325
Blood red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;
3326
When they shot him down on the highway,
3327
Down like a dog on the highway,
3328
And he lay in his blood on the highway,
-“BB”-
3329
with a bunch of lace at his throat.
3330
And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
3331
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
3332
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
3333
A highwayman comes riding—
3334
Riding — riding —
-“BB”-