# Arthur O'Shaughnessy's ODE (We are the music-makers...)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arthur-oshaughnessys-ode-we-are-the-music-makers/269419>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [October 15, 2004, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arthur-oshaughnessys-ode-we-are-the-music-makers/269419 "2004-10-15T18:10:50Z")\
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**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2004, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arthur-oshaughnessys-ode-we-are-the-music-makers/269419/1 "2004-10-15T18:10:50Z")

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For some reason, every site & almost every published anthology  
only has the first three stanzas. I encountered hints of the rest in  
quotes by Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society; found  
it in one anthology back in 1980; and have never seen it since.

So in my mission to make it more available, here it is…  
ODE

Arthur O’Shaughnessy  
(1844-1881)

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,  
shall 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.

A breath of our inspiration  
is the life of each generation;  
A wondrous thing of our dreaming,  
Unearthly, impossible seeming-  
The soldier, the king and the peasant  
are working together in one,  
Till our dream shall become their present  
and their work in this world shall be done.

They had no vision amazing  
of the goodly house they are raising;  
They had no divine foreshowing  
of the land to which they are going,  
But on one man’s soul it hath broken  
a light that doth not depart  
And his look or a word he hath spoken  
wrought flame in another man’s heart.

And therefore to-day is thrilling  
with a past day’s late fulfilling;  
And the multitudes are enlisted  
in the faith that their fathers resisted  
And, scorning the dreams of tomorrow,  
and bringing to pass, as they may,  
To the world for its joy or its sorrow  
the dream that was scorned yesterday.

But we, with our dreaming and singing,  
Ceaseless and sorrowless we!  
The glory about us clinging  
of the glorious futures we see,  
Our souls with high music ringing,  
O man, it must ever be  
That we dwell,in our dreaming and singing,  
a little apart from ye.

For we are afar with the dawning  
and the suns that are not yet high,  
And our of the infinite morning,  
Intrepid you hear us cry-  
How, spite of your human scorning,  
once more God’s future draws nigh,  
And already goes forth the warning  
that ye of the past must die.

Great hail! we cry to the comers  
from the dazzling unknown shore;  
Give us hither your suns and your summers  
and renew our world as of yore;  
You shall teach us your songs new numbers,  
and things that we dreamed not before:  
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers  
and a singer who sings no more.

* * *