Ode

[Scott McKeown]

A friend recently reminded me of this classic poem which has remained a favorite of mine throughout the years. This poem was written in 1874 when the author, who was English, was just 30 years old. He died at age 37. This poem is where the phrase "movers and shakers" originates. The first two lines were featured briefly in the Gene Wilder version of Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory:


Ode 

By Arthur O'Shaughnessy

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 for ever, 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.