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.
...

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.

{read it in full here}

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