“There is a proficiency in the workmanship that, coupled with Mr. Noyes’s humorous tenderness in approaching his theme, all but disarms criticism. Yet if we look at the matter in a cool objective light, it must be said that the attempt is only partially successful.” Ferris Greenslet.
| + − | Atlan. 100: 843. D. ’07. 620w. |
“In ‘The flower of old Japan’ ... it is possible to see little but futile ingenuity in the misdirection of poetic energy.” Wm. Aspenwall Bradley.
| − | N. Y. Times. 12: 539. S. 7, ’07. 1420w. |
“Mr. Noyes has the instrument, the lute, in tune, but has not met the revealing hour which shall give him a message for its strings.” Jessie B. Rittenhouse.
| + − | Putnam’s. 3: 364. D. ’07. 260w. |
Noyes, Alfred. [Poems]: with an introd. by Hamilton Wright Mabie. **$1.25. Macmillan.
6–38994.
The poems of an Oxford man, only twenty-six years of age, who is looked upon in England as destined to “be of the greatest service in the re-establishment of the great traditions of English song.” “Mr. Noyes has ‘drawn inspiration from a rather exceptional range of literature—classic poets, Celtic legends, travellers’ tales, English ballads, Holy Writ, tales of the road, and Lord Rosebery on Napoleon; but he has digested this heterogeneous beebread with the eupepsy of vigorous poetic youth.” (Nation.)