We are the music-makers, <br />And we are the dreamers of dreams, <br />Wandering by lone sea-breakers, <br />And sitting by desolate streams; <br />World-losers and world-forsakers, <br />On whom the pale moon gleams: <br />Yet we are the movers and shakers <br />Of the world for ever, it seems. <br /> <br />With wonderful deathless ditties <br />We build up the world's great cities, <br />And out of a fabulous story <br />We fashion an empire's glory: <br />One man with a dream, at pleasure, <br />Shall go forth and conquer a crown; <br />And three with a new song's measure <br />Can trample an empire down. <br /> <br />We, in the ages lying <br />In the buried past of the earth, <br />Built Nineveh with our sighing, <br />And Babel itself with our mirth; <br />And o'erthrew them with prophesying <br />To the old of the new world's worth; <br />For each age is a dream that is dying, <br />Or one that is coming to birth.<br /><br />Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ode-2/
