Alfred Noyes (September 16, 1880 – June 25/June 28, 1958)[1] was an English poet, best known for his ballads, The Highwayman (1906) and The Barrel Organ. Noyes was born in Wolverhampton, England, the son of Alfred and Amelia Adams Noyes. He attended Exeter College, Oxford, leaving before he had earned a degree. At 21, Noyes published his first collection of poems, The Loom Years. From 1903 to 1908, he published five additional volumes of poetry, including The Forest of Wild Thyme and The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems. In 1918, he followed with a short story collection Walking Shadows, Sea Tales and Others, which included the tale "The Lusitania Waits", a ghost revenge tale based on the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine in 1915—although the story hinges on an erroneous claim that the submarine crew had been awarded the Goetz medal for sinking the ship). In 1924 Noyes published another collection, The Hidden Player.[2] For the Pageant of Empire at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition, Noyes wrote a series of poems set to music by Sir Edward Elgar and known as Pageant of Empire. Among these poems was Shakespeare's Kingdom. As a result of increasing blindness, Noyes began dictating his work. In 1953, he published an autobiography, Two Worlds for Memory. He wrote about sixty books, including poetry, novels, and short story collections. In 1907, he married Garnett Daniels, who died in 1926. Noyes taught English literature at Princeton University from 1914 until 1923. Noyes later converted to Roman Catholicism and wrote about his conversion in The Unknown God (1934). Noyes later married Mary Angela Mayne Weld-Blundell, who had first married into the old recusant Catholic Weld-Blundell family.[3] They settled at Lisle Combe, near Ventnor, Isle of Wight and had three children: Hugh, Veronica, and Margaret. His younger daughter married Michael Nolan (later Lord Nolan) in 1953. Alfred Noyes died at the age of 77. His grave is at Freshwater, Isle of Wight.