The Song of the Ages: A History of Poetry

In ancient times, beneath a burning sun,
When language new and tales had just begun,
The poets rose, their voices clear and bold,
To sing of gods and heroes from of old.
They gathered by the fire’s crackling glow,
And let the ancient rhythms ebb and flow.

The Sumerians first, on tablets of clay,
Pressed words in cuneiform, in solemn array,
Of Gilgamesh, that king, whose mighty quest
In long, relentless verse, could never rest.
Each line, a heartbeat strong, an ancient tread,
The epic born where desert sands were spread.

Then rose the Greeks, with Homer's blinding art,
As Odyssey and Iliad found their start.
Blind bards and wandering minstrels did proclaim
The glories of their heroes, fate, and flame.
In dactylic hexameter they sung,
While gods and men in grander battles clung.

Across the world, the Vedic hymns took shape,
Where Indian priests in fires’ sacred drape
Chanted the Rigveda in voices pure,
Of cosmic laws that ever would endure.
In Sanskrit’s cadence, vast as ocean’s deep,
The knowledge of the ancients there did keep.

And then in China, by the Yellow Sea,
The Shijing brought the kingdom unity—
A collection of the farmer's call and cry,
Of nature’s song beneath the open sky.
Confucius held the lines to heart and soul,
Each verse a thread that tied the nation's whole.

Through deserts hot, to Persia’s fertile plains,
Rumi and Hafez spun love’s sweet refrains.
In couplets soft and verses tinged with fire,
They lifted lovers’ hearts in deep desire.
Their quatrains breathed in metaphors of flame,
Where mystics sang and called the Beloved’s name.

In shadowed abbeys of medieval night,
The troubadours began their lyric flight.
From courts of France, they wandered far and wide,
Their songs of chivalry and love their guide.
They spoke of knights and ladies, proud and fair,
Of roses red and golden flowing hair.

Then Shakespeare’s England, flowering in grace,
Embraced the sonnet’s small but stately space.
With iambs flowing, words arranged just so,
The Bard’s own verse taught love, taught joy and woe.
And poets followed, seeking rhyme’s embrace,
To craft their worlds in such a measured place.

Through wars and wonders, through the Romantics’ eye,
When Wordsworth, Byron, and Keats reached for the sky.
They praised the woods, the rivers, stars, and seas,
And found divinity in autumn trees.
They sought to weave the nature of the soul,
In lush, unbroken lines to make them whole.

But as the years rolled on, new voices stirred—
And Whitman sang, with free-verse lines unfurled,
Of grass and sweat, of vast, electric crowds,
In cities dense, where dreams would not be cowed.
No meter ruled his lines, no rhyming chain,
He spoke of boundless freedom and disdain.

And so the Moderns stormed the hallowed halls,
Where Eliot’s “Waste Land” led solemn calls—
Fragmented thoughts and images reigned free,
In poetry’s embrace of mystery.
The sonnet cracked, the verse flowed swift and wild,
Reflecting life both tragic and defiled.

Now poetry lives both near and far,
In spoken word and whispered lines bizarre.
From digital domains, the verses spill,
And poets write in forms to match their will.
Haikus float gently, tweets in fleeting rhyme,
And stories live in micro-lines of time.

Thus, poetry, that river without end,
Flows through each heart that holds a tale to mend.
From past to present, words are woven bright,
The endless song that conquers dark with light.
So take your place within this timeless art—
And pen the song that rises from your heart.