We Are The Music-Makers Poem by Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy

We Are The Music-Makers

Rating: 3.9


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,
Upon 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 song's measure
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;
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.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
William Wonka 28 March 2022

The Sonsberries taste like Snosberries!

1 0 Reply
Practicing Poetess 18 March 2017

Goosebumps here. Richly descriptive; A poet's dream! Our poems shall live on, long after we are gone. I'm still new enough to this site (since March 13th) that I only just discovered this feature, but this one is going in my favourite poems list!

3 1 Reply
Brian Jani 19 June 2014

I.like this poem, i can relate to it

7 1 Reply

One of my favorites.always a ten! ! !

11 3 Reply
Shannon Warren 04 June 2004

This isn't the full poem. Do you know of anywhere that has the full thing?

9 2 Reply
Kate Cartwright 02 October 2015

It had 9 verses originally. Palgrave discarded 6 of them and put the remaining 3 in his Palgrave's Golden Treasury like verses 1 and 3 - 2 is a bit Victorian British Empire. What you think?

1 0
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