The Music-Makers, Op. 69

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 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

We are the music-makers
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 today 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

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
We are the music-makers
And we are the dreamers of dreams