Poem Timeline
Musicalized poems placed on 50-year eras by their poet’s approximate writing years. Bar length is poem count; color leans dark or bright with average emotional tone.
Eras use a writing-age proxy (about age thirty), not known composition dates. Tone comes from interpretive emotion profiles.
3,361 poems in view .
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Sample poems · click an era to focus
Spring Song of the Birds
King James I of Scotland
Joyful awakening
General Prologue - Opening
Geoffrey Chaucer
Joyful anticipation
Olympian 14
Pindar
Spiritual reverence
Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love
Gaius Valerius Catullus
Passionate intimacy
A True Love
Nicholas Grimald
Romantic exaltation
Give Place, Ye Lovers
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Admiring reverence
Of all the birds
George Gascoigne
Joyful affection
I walk'd along a stream
Christopher Marlowe
Ethereal delight
The Curse
John Donne
Bitter lamentation
Sweet was the song the Virgin sung
John Attey
Tender spirituality
Prepare, prepare
Thomas Shadwell
Foreboding dread
The Voice of Cicadas
Matsuo Bashō
Serene contemplation
Spring Rain
Yosa Buson
Gentle renewal
My Peggy is a young thing
Allan Ramsay
Joyful affection
The Lamb
William Blake
Tender spirituality
Infant Joy
William Blake
Joyful innocence
There Was an Old Man in a Tree
Edward Lear
Playful absurdity
A Visit from St. Nicholas
Clement Clarke Moore
Joyful anticipation
Bible Defence of Slavery
Frances E. W. Harper
Profound sorrow and anger
A Birthday
Christina Rossetti
Joyful celebration
D'Annunzio
Ernest Hemingway
Bitter outrage
Jonathan Jo
A. A. Milne
Playful whimsy
To a Very Slow Air
Philip Arthur Larkin
Serene contemplation
Neurotics
Philip Arthur Larkin
Profound despair