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 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 a kingdom down.

   We, in the ages lying,
      In the buried past of the earth,
   Built Nineveh with our sighing,
      And Babel itself in 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 the world 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 dream of to-morrow,
       Are bringing to pass, as they may,
   In 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 men! 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 out 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;
   Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
       And renew our world as of yore;
   You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
       And things that we dreamed not before:
   Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
       And a singer who sings no more.