100 Years Ago: English Poet Alfred Noyes Performs at Monticello Seminary

Distinguished English poet Alfred Noyes performed a number of his poems at Monticello Seminary on Saturday, November 14, 1925. A pouring rain did not deter a large audience, and many people drove in from Alton to attend.

Monticello Seminary principal Harriet Rice Congdon introduced Noyes, who opened with “The Gray Squirrel,” and also read “The Barrel Organ,” “The Wagon,” The Highwayman,” and other selections of his poetry.

Alfred Noyes hated free verse and said, according to the Alton Evening Telegraph, that “true poetry must have that true rhythm and music that makes poets singers.” He admired Homer, Virgil, Milton, and Shakespeare, as well as Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, and Wordsworth. He couldn’t stand the work of James Joyce.

Noyes grew up in Stratfordshire, England, and rowed at Oxford. Noyes’s first volume of poems, The Loom of Years, was published in 1902, when he was only 21 years old, and received praise from esteemed poets such as George Meredith and William Butler Yeats. During a lecture tour in the United States, Noyes and his wife visited Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s daughters and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s sons. Noyes taught at Princeton University and contributed to American magazines such as The Nation and The Atlantic Monthly. He died in 1958 on the Isle of Wight. He wrote his last poem, “Ballade of the Breaking Shell,” one month before his death.

Project Gutenberg, Hathi Trust, and the Internet Archive all have digitized copies of many of Alfred Noyes’s poetry collections and other writings.

Sources

“Alfred Noyes.” Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-07362.https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014687354/

“Alfred Noyes.” Poetry Foundation, 2025.https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/alfred-noyes

“Alfred Noyes Delights Crowd at Monticello.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), November 16, 1925.

“Moyes [sp], Noted as Poet, to Speak at Monticello.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), November 13, 1925.

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