Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy. 18441881828. 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, | 5 |
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, | 10 |
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 | 15 |
Can trample an empire down. | |
We, in the ages lying | |
In the buried past of the earth, | |
Built Nineveh with our sighing, | |
And Babel itself with our mirth; | 20 |
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. |