Music Background - Etude Op 10 No 12

 

 

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 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.

Arthur 0'Shaughnessy, 1874