Noyes, Alfred (1880–1958)

English poet. He wrote poems about the sea, including the popular sea epic Drake (1906–08), and the anthology favourites ‘The Barrel-Organ’ (1904), with its refrain ‘Go down to Kew in lilac-time ..’, and ‘The Highwayman’ (1907). His final volume of Collected Poems was published in 1963.

Noyes was born in Wolverhampton and educated at Exeter College, Oxford. Encouraged by English writer George Meredith, he devoted himself to poetry and succeeded in making a livelihood. His first volume was The Loom of Years (1902). In 1913 he delivered the Lowell lectures in the USA on ‘The Sea in English Poetry’, and was professor of modern English literature at Princeton 1914–23. Later he returned to England and settled on the Isle of Wight, and in 1930 became a Roman Catholic.

Other works include Tales of the Mermaid Tavern (1913) and The Torchbearers (1922–30), an epic of scientific discovery. His collected poems were published in 1950. He also wrote several plays, a book of critical essays, Aspects of Modern Poetry (1924), and an autobiography, Two Worlds for Memory (1953).