' Where Eras Speak: A Polyphonic Ode To The english World's Poets ' By Ink Soul Poem by Ink Soul

Where Eras Speak: A Polyphonic Ode to the
English World's Poets by Ink Soul

In the roots of speech, where the old winds blow,
From caves of song and firelight's glow,
There stood Caedmon's trembling hymn,
And Beowulf's echo proud and grim.
Cynewulf carved God's runic breath,
While Bede wrote truth of life and death.
Wulfstan thundered in holy tone,
Ælfric prayed in learned stone.
The Seafarer sailed through soul and storm,
The Dream of the Rood in crucifix form.
The Wanderer wept in winter's grief,
The Wife's Lament found no relief.
Deor lamented what time forgot,
And Maldon's poet gave warriors thought.
From Phoenix's flame to Judith's sword,
The Saxon bards shaped early word.
All these voices, rough and bold,
Gave birth to verse in ages old.

When Norman towers rose from land,
The middle tongues took poet's hand.
Chaucer laughed on pilgrim road,
Langland's dream through Piers flowed.
Pearl Poet showed a knightly face,
And Gower wove in threefold grace.
Julian saw through God's own glass,
Margery walked where few would pass.
Lydgate rhymed for princely cheer,
While Henryson brought fables near.
Skelton stung with comic fire,
And Hoccleve wrote with worn desire.
Dunbar sang of bitter fate,
James of Scotland shaped his state.
Minot rhymed for war and king,
Marie told tales with courtly ring.
Sir Orfeo danced through faery air,
Malory dreamed of knights so rare.
Mystery plays in guildhalls rose,
And love in common English flows.

Now golden ink from courtly floors,
Where Shakespeare sang and opened doors.
Spenser's Queen rode Faerie lines,
And Marlowe sold his soul for signs.
Sidney shone with sonnet's light,
Donne made love and death unite.
Herbert knelt with sacred grace,
And Crashaw danced in angel's face.
Vaughan dreamed stars beyond the tree,
And Herrick begged the bloom to be.
Jonson mocked with marble form,
Campion's lute felt sunlight warm.
Drayton's love in verses burned,
Raleigh's soul to dust returned.
Webster stitched a bloody seam,
Dekker showed the city's dream.
Lyly, Cowley, Cleveland—proud,
Filled the Renaissance with cloud.
Their voices crowned the stage and song—
Where modern words were born along.

From powdered wigs to sharpened wit,
The poets rose in measured fit.
Pope with rhyme both sharp and clean,
Swift with truth that bit the scene.
Dryden formed the polished line,
While Johnson spoke in scholar's shrine.
Thomson sketched the turning year,
Gray brought silence, death, and fear.
Montagu from Turkey wrote,
Goldsmith sang the peasant's note.
Cowper's calm in madness lay,
Collins wept in Grecian day.
Smart prayed loud in poet's name,
Prior jested without shame.
Warton's musings coldly shone,
Finch carved female voice alone.
Savage cried in London's snow,
And More made moral feelings grow.
Sensibility's quiet tears
Prepared the path for coming years.

Then broke the storm of hearts on fire,
Romantics sang with wild desire.
Wordsworth saw the world in dew,
Coleridge dreamed in oceans blue.
Byron wandered in his flame,
Shelley called the wind by name.
Keats in Grecian stillness slept,
Blake with angels laughed and wept.
Southey roared in warrior song,
Moore made love and tales belong.
Landon grieved in letters late,
Smith held nature's fragile weight.
Baillie's stage of souls unmasked,
Campbell mourned what history tasked.
Beddoes with his ghostly pen,
More again spoke truths for men.
Elliott's voice rang from the mill,
Hogg's folk tales wander still.
Leigh Hunt, in bright salon's shine,
Kept the pulse of poet's line.

The Victorians marched in ordered pace,
Yet carried storms behind the face.
Tennyson's deep and golden song,
Browning's mind both fierce and long.
Elizabeth's strong heart confessed,
While Arnold's doubt found no rest.
Hopkins' verse sprung into air,
Rossetti painted dark despair.
Meredith turned the thinking tide,
Clough and Patmore walked beside.
Hardy watched love waste and fall,
Webster dared to challenge all.
Swinburne's waves broke loud and high,
Dowson drank and let life die.
Thomson dreamed of night and fate,
Allingham rhymed of country gate.
Ingelow's lines held quiet grace,
Jean Ingelow found nature's face.
In their lines, both pride and pain—
Echo through a soot-stained reign.

Then war drums beat and cities burned,
And modern minds to silence turned.
Yeats traced spirals into time,
Eliot shattered sense and rhyme.
Auden walked through world's despair,
While Dylan lit the drunken air.
Sassoon roared from soldier's hell,
Owen's silence broke the shell.
Graves remembered men and loss,
Spender bore the poet's cross.
MacNeice spoke in fractured tone,
Sitwell sang in voice alone.
Lowell's mind moved through the dark,
Smith waved drowning from the park.
Cummings played with words and shape,
Moore's sharp eye let nothing escape.
Stevens built a world of mind,
Bunting's lines were tautly lined.
Crane leapt where gods may fall—
In modern words, we heard it all.

Postmodern winds were wild and wide,
Where poets from all shores abide.
Larkin sighed for what is gone,
Hughes brought beasts into the dawn.
Plath burned hot in brilliant pain,
Heaney dug the truth from rain.
Sexton bled in every page,
Ginsberg howled against the cage.
Ashbery wandered wordless maze,
Geoffrey Hill in shadowed haze.
Soyinka's stage broke every wall,
Adrienne Rich gave voice to all.
Carol Duffy spoke love aloud,
Baraka chanted to the crowd.
Duffy, Atwood, Soyinka—bold,
Spoke where truth could not be sold.
James Merrill in visions drowned,
Ezekiel in Bombay was found.
These were voices sharp and new—
From broken ground, the wild things grew.

Now in the present, many rise,
With new words bright beneath wide skies.
Zadie writes with sharpened grace,
Ocean weeps in lover's face.
Rupi sings from wound to breath,
Rankine counts the subtle death.
Vuong rewrites what love has meant,
Nagra bends the old accent.
Shire gives voice to war-born flight,
Doshi dances through the night.
Oswald watches rivers bend,
Akbar names what will not end.
Sarah Howe in silence prays,
Ben Okri's words are fire and maze.
Joy Harjo calls the spirits home,
Atwood dreams in future's dome.
Arundhathi's heart is fierce and wide,
While Dharker walks with pain as guide.
Their voices fresh, their ink still wet—
But their truths, we won't forget.

From Beowulf's roar to Shire's cry,
From Milton's fall to Ocean's sky—
All these poets built the land
With only ink and their own hand.
They spoke of gods, of war, of rain,
Of love, of lies, of loss, of pain.
Time may pass, but still they stand—
The poet's voice is never banned.