Ode


by Arthur W. E. 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 forever it seems

With wonderful deathless ditties
we build up the world's great cities
And out of a fabulous story
we can conjure 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 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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