Other Poets

Arthur O'Shaughnessy

Ode

(Thanks to Teresa Church)

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 forever, 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 son's measure

Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the earth,

Built Ninevah 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.