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Ode

English poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy's most famous work by far, "Ode (We are the music makers)" has become a touchstone for idealists and dreamers since its first publication in 1873. In this poem, a chorus of artists sing of themselves and their role as revolutionary seers. Artists, the poem suggests, are both the predictors and the creators of glorious new futures. Through their prophetic imaginations, they foresee the change they go on to inspire. As such, they are "the movers and shakers" of history—or, in the earlier poet Shelley's words, "the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

The Full Text of “Ode (We are the music makers)”

1 We are the music makers,

2 And we are the dreamers of dreams,

3 Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

4 And sitting by desolate streams; —

5 World-losers and world-forsakers,

6 On whom the pale moon gleams:

7 Yet we are the movers and shakers

8 Of the world for ever, it seems.

9 With wonderful deathless ditties

10 We build up the world's great cities,

11 And out of a fabulous story

12 We fashion an empire's glory:

13 One man with a dream, at pleasure,

14 Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

15 And three with a new song's measure

16 Can trample a kingdom down.

17 We, in the ages lying,

18 In the buried past of the earth,

19 Built Nineveh with our sighing,

20 And Babel itself in our mirth;

21 And o'erthrew them with prophesying

22 To the old of the new world's worth;

23 For each age is a dream that is dying,

24 Or one that is coming to birth.

25 A breath of our inspiration

26 Is the life of each generation;

27 A wondrous thing of our dreaming

28 Unearthly, impossible seeming —

29 The soldier, the king, and the peasant

30 Are working together in one,

31 Till our dream shall become their present,

32 And their work in the world be done.

33 They had no vision amazing

34 Of the goodly house they are raising;

35 They had no divine foreshowing

36 Of the land to which they are going:

37 But on one man's soul it hath broken,

38 A light that doth not depart;

39 And his look, or a word he hath spoken,

40 Wrought flame in another man's heart.

41 And therefore to-day is thrilling

42 With a past day's late fulfilling;

43 And the multitudes are enlisted

44 In the faith that their fathers resisted,

45 And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,

46 Are bringing to pass, as they may,

47 In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,

48 The dream that was scorned yesterday.

49 But we, with our dreaming and singing,

50 Ceaseless and sorrowless we!

51 The glory about us clinging

52 Of the glorious futures we see,

53 Our souls with high music ringing:

54 O men! it must ever be

55 That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,

56 A little apart from ye.

57 For we are afar with the dawning

58 And the suns that are not yet high,

59 And out of the infinite morning

60 Intrepid you hear us cry —

61 How, spite of your human scorning,

62 Once more God's future draws nigh,

63 And already goes forth the warning

64 That ye of the past must die.

65 Great hail! we cry to the comers

66 From the dazzling unknown shore;

67 Bring us hither your sun and your summers;

68 And renew our world as of yore;

69 You shall teach us your song's new numbers,

70 And things that we dreamed not before:

71 Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,

72 And a singer who sings no more.

“Ode (We are the music makers)” Summary

- We are the ones who make music, and the ones who dream dreams. We wander along remote shorelines and sit by lonely streams. We are people who renounce the world, people on whom the moon shines. But we also always seem to be the people who shake the world to its foundations.
  We construct the world's great cities with our awe-inspiring, immortal songs. From magical stories, we create the glories of empires. A single artist with a dream can overthrow a monarch, and three artists with a new song can overthrow a whole kingdom.
  Those of us who are long dead and buried built the ancient city of Nineveh with our laments, and the ancient city of Babel with our laughter. Then we destroyed those cities with prophecies of a new and better world, because every era is a dream that is either dying or being born.
  A hint of our vision gives life to every new generation. Our astonishing, seemingly impossible dreamsgive soldiers, kings, and peasants alike a shared vision, until our dreams become reality and everyone works together to make them come true.
  Normal people don't know that they're building this new world; they have no advance knowledge of the new place they're going. But the solitary artist's soul can perceive an eternal light, and the way he looks and the words he says light fires in other people's hearts.
  Therefore, the present is charged with the energy of past prophecies, and today's people enact the beliefs that earlier generations didn't accept. And while the people of the present reject tomorrow's new ideas, they still live out the joyful or sorrowful dreams of artists who came before them.
  But we, dreaming and singing, never stop and are not sad. We feel the glory of the future all around us, and our souls hear divine music. Oh, normal people! We must always, because of our dreams and songs, live separately from you.
  For we live in the dawns of future days, and from our place in these infinite mornings, you hear us bravely shout that, in spite of your scorn for new ideas, God's future is coming closer anyway, and it's already clear that you, too, will die, as the past must.
  We shout grand greetings to the visitors from the bright, unexplored shores of the future, and ask them to bring us their light and their summers, and to renew the world once again. They will teach us new songs, and new dreams, in spite of a dreamer who sleeps, and a singer who no longer sings.
“Ode (We are the music makers)” Themes
- The Revolutionary Power of Art
  The artists of Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s “Ode” are world-changers, prophets who sing of the future. To be one of these “music makers” is to have the power to predict what’s to come—and by predicting change, the poem argues, to in fact bring that change about. Artists grant the people of the present a glorious vision they can strive towards. Far from being merely decorative, then, the poem argues that art is a force that shapes history.
  The collective speakers of the poem survey the whole sweep of human history, finding world-shaking artistry in all eras. In doing so, they connect art to human progress. While the poem's speakers see into the world’s “glorious futures,” for example, they also hearken back to the distant past, when artists "built" the famous biblical city of "Nineveh with [their] sighing / And Babel itself in [their] mirth." Artists, the poem insists, have raised ancient wonders only to overthrow them “with prophesying” later. Just as artists "buil[t] up the world's great cities," they handily conquered "kingdom[s]." Their work has been both the "glory" of empires and the downfall of rulers, marking the rise and fall of entire civilizations.
  At all of these times, they say, artists have had visions of revolutionary change—visions that later come to pass because artists share them. They are the ones, the poem insists, who understand when the "dream" of an "age [...] is dying" and must be dreamt anew. Part of being an artist, then, is to foresee huge shifts in the very fabric of civilization: the destruction of the current way of doing things and the rise of something totally new. Art, in this poem’s view, is thus intimately connected to death and rebirth as well. The artists of this poem are always predicting change, and the change they predict is always a glorious renewal as old, outdated systems fall away and are replaced with the "dream that was scorned yesterday."
  With their visions of brilliant change, artists light the way for the rest of the world, bringing about the very change they predict through the power of imagination. By presenting beautiful visions of what could be, artists light revolutionary "flames" in the minds and hearts of non-artists. Artists are thus both prophets and enactors of change, the poem insists, people who dream up and create the world itself.
- Artistic Isolation and Connection
  To be a world-changing artist, in this poem, is also to be set apart from normal daily life. The artists O’Shaughnessy imagines have to sit at a remove from the ordinary world as it is in order to see the world to come. But there’s company in this isolation: while artists don’t get to lead ordinary lives, they’re still part of the “we,” the artistic collective. The poem thus implies that to be an artist is both to be part of a shared legacy and to be set apart from mainstream society, to be at once isolated and part of a "ceaseless," "sorrowless" community working to create a better tomorrow.
  Having delighted in artists’ abilities to change the world, the speakers introduce a note of caution: artists are always oddballs in their time, separated from normal people, living “a little apart from ye.” Part of that isolation is because no one likes being told that their present efforts and lives will one day be overthrown by change and death! The mainstream reaction to artists is thus fearful “scorning,” which shuts artists out from everyday life.
  But the very structure of the poem, with its choral “we,” suggests that, even if an artist’s life is lonely, it’s also full of good and noble company. The chorus of speakers, singing together of beautiful visions, by its very existence makes it clear that to be an artist is to belong to a community—even if it’s an unconventional one. Artistic outcasts come together in a legacy that stretches all through human history, their work filling "another man's heart" with the "flame" of inspiration. Artists are "ceaseless and sorrowless"—relentless and happy—in their endeavors in part because they know that their ideas will not be so scorned in the world they are creating. They "cling[]" to "glorious futures," finding in their foresight the connection and company they need to sustain their present isolation.
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Ode (We are the music makers)”
- Lines 1-8
  "Ode" begins with a chorus. Together, a group speaks as one: "We are the music makers, / And we are the dreamers of dreams." This "Ode" will be an ode to artists, sung by artists: a piece of art about the nature of art.
  These "music makers" seem to be set apart: they're "world-losers and world-forsakers," monk-like people who turn away from everyday reality. Their dreaming takes them to isolated places, "lone" and "desolate" bodies of water under the "pale moon." The sibilance of those "lone sea-breakers" and "desolate streams" gives their wanderings a hushed, magical quality. These singers are solitary, nocturnal creatures, and they seem to feel a kinship with remote and mysterious landscapes.
  But there's a paradox here: these lonely singers are also a group, a "we." And as a collective, they are a world-changing force. For all that they wander alone, they are "movers and shakers," people who change the world. This tension between artistic isolation and artistic power will be one of the major themes of this poem.
  There's another paradox here, too: the relationship between what's eternal and what's mutable. The reader has probably heard the saying that the only constant in the world is change. The "movers and shakers / Of the world for ever" indeed seem to deal in eternally changing matters, and dense patterns of repetition in both the poem's images and its language underscore that point. Image-wise, the speakers place themselves in landscapes associated with both eternity and change: the constant but never-the-same-twice movements of waves and rivers, and the always-cycling moon.
  The poem's echoing sounds reflect that feeling of eternal change with strong alliteration ("music makers," "dreamers of dreams"), diacope ("world-losers and world-forsakers"), and polyptoton("dreamers of dreams"). Here, themes of change and repetition are baked right into the poem's sounds. Something similar happens with the rhyme scheme, where a steady, musical ABAB pattern draws the reader's attention to a rhythm of similarity and difference.

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