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: The poem was published in volume IV of Alfred Noyes Collected Poems, 1927 Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood & Sons Ltd. This is a four volume set and "extremely rare" : Here is the transcript as it appears in that book. : THE BALLAD OF D*CK TURPIN. : The daylight moon looked quietly down : Through the gathering dusk on London town. : A smock-frockt yokel hobbled along : By Newgate, humming a country song. : Chewing a straw, he stood to stare : At the proclamation posted there : : Three hundred guineas on Turpin’s head, : Trap him alive or shoot him dead ; : And a hundred more for his mate, Tom King. : He crouched, like a tiger about to spring. : Then he looked up, and he looked down ; : And chuckling low, like a country clown, : D*ck turpin painfully hobbled away : In the quest of his Inn – The Load of Hay. : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Alone in her stall, his mare, Black Bess, : Lifted her head in mute distress ; : For five strange men had entered the yard : And looked at her long, and looked at her hard. : They went out, muttering under their breath ; : And then – the dusk drew still as death. : But the velvet ears of the listening mare : Lifted and twitched. They were there – still there ; : Hidden and waiting ; for whom ? And why ? : The clock struck four. A step drew nigh. : It was King ! Tom King ! D*ck turpin’s mate. : The black mare whinneyed. Too late ! Too late ! : They rose like shadows out of the ground : And grappled him there, without a sound. : “Throttle him – quietly – choke him dead ! : Or we lose the hawk for a jay,” they said. : They wrestled and heaved, five men to one ; : And a yokel entered the yard, alone ; : A smock-frockt yokel, hobbling slow ; : But a fight is physic, as all men know. : His age dropped off. He stood upright. : He leapt like a tiger into the fight. : Hand to hand, they fought in the dark ; : For none could fire at a twisting mark, : Where he who shot at a foe might send : His pistol-ball through the skull of a friend. : But “Shoot, D*ck, shoot !” gasped out Tom King. : “Shoot, or damn it, we both shall swing ! : Shoot and chance it !” D*ck leapt back. : He drew. He fired. At the pistol’s crack : The wrestlers whirled. They scattered apart, : And the bullet drilled through Tom King’s heart. : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : D*ck Turpin dropped his smoking gun. : They had him trapped now, five men to one. : A gun in each hand of the crouching five, : They could take D*ck turpin now, alive ; : Take him and bind him and tell their tale : As a pot-house boast, when they drank their ale. : He whistled, soft as a bird might call ; : And a head-rope snapped in his bird’s dark stall. : He whistled, soft as a nightingale. : He heard the swish of her swinging tail. : There was no way out that the five could see, : To heaven or hell, but the Tyburn tree ; : No door but death ; and yet, once more, : He whistled as though at a sweetheart’s door. : The five men laughed at him, trapped alive ; : And – the door crashed open behind the five ! : Out of the stable, a wave of thunder, : Swept Black Bess, and the five went under. : He leapt to the saddle. A hoof-spurned stone : Flashed blue fire, and their prize was gone. : Away, through the ringing, cobbled street, and out by the Northern Gate, : He rode that night, like a ghost in flight from the dogs of his own fate. : By Cr*ckskull Common, and Highgate Heath, he heard the chase behind ; : But he rode to forget – forget – forget – the hounds of his own mind. : And cherry-black Bess on the Enfield Road flew light as a bird to her goal ; : But her rider carried a heavier load, in his own struggling soul. : He needed neither spur nor whip. He was borne on a darker gale. : He rode like a hurricane-hunted ship, with the doom-wind in her sail. : He rode for the one impossible thing ; that, in the morning light, : The towers of York might waken him – from London, and last night. : He rode to prove himself another, and leave himself behind ; : And the hunted self was like a cloud ; but the hunter like the wind. : Neck and neck they rode together ; that, in the day’s first gleam, : Each might prove that the other self was but a mocking dream. : And the little sleeping villages, and the breathless country-side, : Woke to the drum of the racing hoofs ; but missed that ghostly ride. : They did not hear, they did not see, as the drumming hoofs grew nigh, : The dark magnificent thief in the night that rode so subtly by. : They woke. They rushed to the wayside door. They saw what the midnight showed, - : A mare that came like a crested wave along the Great North Road ; : A flying spark in the formless dark, a flash from the hoof-spurned stone, : And the lifted face of a Man, that took the star-light, and was gone. : They heard the shout of the pounding chase, three hundred yards away. : There were fourte*n men in a stream of sweat and a plaster of Midland clay. : The star-light struck their pistol-b*tts, as they p*ssed in a clattering crowd, : But the hunting wraith was away like the wind at the heels of the hunted cloud. : He rode by the walls of Nottingham ; and, over him as he went, : Like ghosts across the Great North Road, the boughs of Sherwood bent. : By Bawtry all the chase but one had dropt a league behind, : Yet that one Rider hunted him, invisibly as the wind. : And Northward, like a blacker night, he saw the moors up-loom, : And Don and Derwent sang to him, like memory in the gloom, : And northward, northward as he rode, and sweeter than a prayer : The voices of those hidden streams, the Trent and Ouse and Aire ; : Streams that could never slake his thirst. He heard them as they flowed. : But one dumb shadow hunted him along the Great North Road. : Till now, at dawn, the towers of York, rose on the reddening sky, : And Bess went down between his knees, like a breaking wave, to die. : He lay beside her in the ditch. He kissed her lovely head ; : And a shadow p*ssed him like the wind, and left him with his dead. : He saw, but not as one that wakes, the City that he sought ; : He had escaped from London town, but not from his own thought. : He strode up to the Mickle-gate with none to say him nay ; : And there he met his Other Self, in the stranger light of day. : He strode up to the dreadful Thing that in the gateway stood ; : And it stretched out a ghostly hand that the dawn had stained with blood. : It stood, as if in the gates of hell, with none to hear or see. : “Welcome ! ” It said, “Thou’st ridden well ; and outstript all but me.” : PS i really think the censorship on this page is utterly ridiculous. It looked more obscene after i edited it!

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