WHEN THE WORLD LEARNED TO SPEAK
WHEN THE WORLD LEARNED TO SPEAK
— A Tribute to the Bard of Avon
Verse I
They knew thee not in daylight’s common hour,
Nor crown’d thy brow with laurel when thou stood;
Thou walk’dst the boards, a debtor unto power,
And sold thy breath for bread and understood.
No trumpet told thee thou wouldst never die—
Only the stage, the night, the words to say;
The crowd pass’d by, yet kings would later cry
Their secret guilt through lines thou cast away.
Pre-Chorus
They call’d thee player, clerk, a country name,
Yet empires learnt their conscience in thy flame;
Thou held’st the glass to Time and call’d it truth,
And taught decay to speak in mortal youth.
Chorus
And when the world forgot how men should feel,
Thou gav’st it grief a language it could bear;
When hearts lay mute, thou taught’st them how to kneel,
And made their silence honest through despair.
O mortal voice, now louder than all breath—
Thou sang’st not life alone, but look’d on death;
And so the world, long after thou art gone,
Still learns to speak where thou hast spoken on.
Verse II
Thy days knew plague, and loss, and broken bread,
Children outliv’d by lines thou hadst not crown’d;
Love mock’d, and power barter’d what thou said,
Yet still thy pen refus’d to kneel or sound.
For thou didst know the cost of mortal fame:
That truth must bleed before the crowd will read,
And art must walk unarm’d, devoid of name,
If it would speak for all, and not for need.
Bridge
Not saint nor prophet wast thou dress’d to be,
But man entire, with fault and fire entwined;
And thus the ages bow not unto thee—
They find themselves upon thy open mind.
Where envy speaks, where mercy learns delay,
Where guilt wears crowns and innocence is slain,
There stands thy voice, unaged by the day,
Teaching mankind to suffer without feign.
Final Chorus
And when our age grows loud with hollow cries,
And names its noise sincerity and truth,
We turn again where thy still wisdom lies,
And learn what it hath cost to live as youth.
O fragile man, whose ink outliv’d his breath,
Who taught us love by daring name our death—
Not candle, wind, nor time hath blown thee down:
The world still speaks—because thou taught’st its sound.
Outro
Sleep not in Stratford’s soil alone, sweet Will;
Thy grave is every mind that dares be still.
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