Ode

by Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy

We are the music makers,

And we are the dreamer 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 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.

A breath of our inspiration,

Is the life of each generation.

A wondrous thing of our dreaming,

Unearthly, impossible seeming-

The soldier, the king, and the peasant

Are working together in one,

Till our dream shall become their present,

And their work in the world be done.

They had no vision amazing

Of the goodly house they are raising.

They had no divine foreshowing

Of the land to which they are going:

But on one man's soul it hath broke,

A light that doth not depart

And his look, or a word he hath spoken,

Wrought flame in another man's heart.

And therefore today is thrilling,

With a past day's late fulfilling.

And the multitudes are enlisted

In the faith that their fathers resisted,

And, scorning the dream of tomorrow,

Are bringing to pass, as they may,

In the world, for it's joy or it's sorrow,

The dream that was scorned yesterday.

But we, with our dreaming and singing,

Ceaseless and sorrowless we!

The glory about us clinging

Of the glorious futures we see,

Our souls with high music ringing;

O men! It must ever be

That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,

A little apart from ye.

For we are afar with the dawning

And the suns that are not yet high,

And out of the infinite morning

Intrepid you hear us cry-

How, spite of your human scorning,

Once more God's future draws nigh,

And already goes forth the warning

That ye of the past must die.

Great hail! we cry to the corners

From the dazzling unknown shore;

Bring us hither your sun and your summers,

And renew our world as of yore;

You shall teach us your song's new numbers,

And things that we dreamt not before;

Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,

And a singer who sings no more.

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