Ode - Arthur O'Shaughnessy

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song s measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

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Arthur O'Shaughnessy (1844 – 1881) England