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 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 a kingdom 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.

 A. W. E. O'Shaughnessy