Poetry Corner – 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 the 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.

- Edgar O'Shaughnessy 
- (the rest of the poem is longer and, frankly, weaker. Vanitas poetae: poets are at their worst when allowed to opine on how world-changing *their* poetry is.....)

	

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