Alfred Noyes wrote The Empire Builders at the turn of the 20th century. Despite the era in which it was written, there are different postcolonial themes regarding the hierarchy of differences. The tone of the poem is pessimistic, which is understandable since Noyes was writing during the naturalist period of English literature. Noyes is aimed at the middle class of England; those who “fulfill their duties as they come” (Noyes, 45). It uses the first person plural article to create unification between the readers and the narrator. Noyes, in his poem, addresses two postcolonial themes of Christianity as a vehicle for colonization and the errors of European philosophy. In this essay, I argue that the themes and structure evoked in Alfred Noyes's The Empire Builders are essential to constructing the notion of a hierarchy of difference. The hierarchy of differences helped create a colonial state and since postcolonial theory mainly analyzes the legacy of the colonial period, it is essential to know the hierarchy of differences. I will divide my essay into three parts: In the first stage, I discuss the structure of the poem and how it creates a hierarchy of differences. In the second step, I discuss the two themes mentioned above and how they establish a fragmented world between the West and the East. Finally, in the third step, I discuss the conception of time evoked in the poem and its relationship with postcolonial theory. The structure of the poem shows the hierarchy of difference within itself. The poem consists of six stanzas of eight lines each. The poem is divided into two sections: the first three stanzas describe the effects of the empire builder and the last three stanzas describe the... middle of paper ...... century. In conclusion, The Empire Builders can be interpreted from a postcolonial perspective since it produces many elements of the hierarchy of differences. Works Cited “Can non-Europeans think? - Notice. Np, and Web. February 17, 2014. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincialize Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2008. Print. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth: Frantz Fanon. New York: Grove, 2004. Print. Noyes, Alfred. Empire builders. Oxford: The MacMillan Company, 1908. Print. Read, Arthur Robert. Main currents of modern literature. Folcroft, PA: Folcroft, 1970. Print. Ritze, George and Zeynep Atalay. Readings on globalization: key concepts and major debates. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Print. Rodney, Walter, AM Babu and Vincent Harding. How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Washington, DC: Howard UP, 1981. Print.