Compensations

Not with a flash that rends the blue

Shall fall the avenging sword.

Gently as the evening dew

Descends the mighty Lord.

His dreadful balances are made

To move with moon and tide;

Yet shall not mercy be afraid

Nor justice be denied.

The dreams that seemed to waste away,

The kindliness forgot,

Were singing in your heart today

Although you knew them not.

The sun shall not forget his road,

Nor the high stars their rhyme,

The traveller with the heavier load

Has one less hill to climb.

And, though a darker shadow fall

On every struggling age,

How shall it be if, after all,

He share our pilgrimage?

The end we mourn is not the end.

The dust has nimble wings.

But truth and beauty have a friend

At the deep heart of things.

He will not speak? What friend belies

His love with idle breath?

We read it in each others' eyes,

And ask no more in death.

Alfred Noyes

Alfred Noyes, (born Sept. 16, 1880, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, Eng.—died June 28, 1958, Isle of Wight), English poet, a traditionalist remembered chiefly for his lyrical verse. Noyes’ first volume of poems, The Loom of Years (1902), published while he was still at the University of Oxford, was followed by others that showed patriotic fervor and a love for the sea. He taught modern English literature at Princeton University in the United States from 1914 to 1923. Of Noyes’s later works, the most notable is the epic trilogy The Torch-Bearers (1922–30), which took as its theme the progress of science through the ages. His autobiography, Two Worlds for Memory, appeared in 1953. Noyes married Garnett Daniels in 1907, and they had three children. His increasing popularity allowed the family to live off royalty checks. In 1914, Noyes accepted a teaching position at Princeton University, where he taught English Literature until 1923. He was a noted critic of modernist writers, particularly James Joyce. Likewise, his work at this time was criticized by some for its refusal to embrace the modernist movement. After the death of his wife, Garnett in 1926, Noyes converted to Roman Catholicism and married his second wife, Mary Angela Mayne Weld-Blundell. In 1929, the family moved to Lisle Combe, St Lawrence, Isle of Wight where Noyes continued to write essays and poems, culminating in the collection, Orchard's Bay (1939). Alfred Noyes died on June 25, 1958, and was buried on the Isle of Wight.

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Compensations

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