ODE
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 buildup 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 age 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 into birth.
Arthur O' Shaughnessy