Joseph Milton Hayes, known to the public as J. Milton Hayes, was born in Bristol on 13 January 1884 and died on 6 February 1940. During his lifetime he became one of the best-known writers of recitation verse in Britain, a poet whose work was heard as often as it was read. His celebrity rested especially on “The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God,” a narrative poem whose opening line, “There’s a one-eyed yellow idol…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
J. Milton Hayes
Poet B
Alfred Noyes
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 75%
Blended 75%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Alfred Noyes was born on 16 September 1880 in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, and died on 25 June 1958 at his home on the Isle of Wight. During the first decades of the twentieth century he was among the best-known English poets in the world: a writer whose books sold widely, whose recitations drew large audiences, and whose poems entered schools, anthologies, music halls, and family memory. He was celebrated above all…
“I do not believe and never have believed in the pacifist who says that a man shall not defend himself or his country from attack or that treaties should be broken with impunity.”
In time
J. Milton Hayes
Alfred Noyes
1880
1958
They overlapped for 57 years (1884–1940).
When J. Milton Hayes was born, Alfred Noyes was about 4.
Alfred Noyes was about 60 when J. Milton Hayes died.
On the map
About 150 km separate Leeds, Yorkshire, England from Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England. Both have ground in England.
J. Milton Hayes
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.
From the biographies
edwardian period
J. Milton Hayes: bristol, the green eye of the little yellow god, khatmandu, the punch and judy man, edwardian period, music halls, variety theatres, public recitations. Alfred Noyes: wolverhampton, isle of wight, the highwayman, garnett daniels, forty singing seamen, drake: an english epic, watchers of the sky, exeter college.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
J. Milton Hayes
Alfred Noyes
Emotional landscapes
J. Milton Hayes: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Alfred Noyes: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness.