We Are the Music Makers by Arthur OShaughnessy

Published: March 28, 2008, 5:57 p.m.

b"O\\u2019Shaughnessy read by Classic Poetry Aloud:\\nhttp://www.classicpoetryaloud.com/\\nGiving voice to the poetry of the past.\\n\\n---------------------------------------------\\n\\nOde \\u2018We Are the Music Makers\\u2019 \\nby Arthur O'Shaughnessy (1844 \\u2013 1881)\\n\\nWe are the music-makers,\\nAnd we are the dreamers of dreams,\\nWandering by lone sea-breakers,\\nAnd sitting by desolate streams;\\nWorld-losers and world-forsakers,\\nOn whom the pale moon gleams:\\nYet we are the movers and shakers\\nOf the world for ever, it seems.\\n\\nWith wonderful deathless ditties\\nWe build up the world's great cities,\\nAnd out of a fabulous story\\nWe fashion an empire's glory:\\nOne man with a dream, at pleasure,\\nShall go forth and conquer a crown;\\nAnd three with a new song's measure\\nCan trample an empire down.\\n\\nWe, in the ages lying\\nIn the buried past of the earth,\\nBuilt Nineveh with our sighing,\\nAnd Babel itself with our mirth;\\nAnd o'erthrew them with prophesying\\nTo the old of the new world's worth;\\nFor each age is a dream that is dying,\\nOr one that is coming to birth."