Lyr Req: Ode: 'We are the music-makers...'

Subject: Lyric Req: We are the music makers, we are
From: Megaera of Moon Birch Grove
Date: 02 Jan 97 - 01:14 PM

I'm looking for the lyrics to a song that begins...

We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams...

I'd also like to get a copy of the melody line if possible. If you have the lyrics or a source for the music, I'd be most grateful. Thanks!

Subject: RE: Lyric Req: We are the music makers, we are
From: Jerry Friedman
Date: 03 Jan 97 - 04:48 PM

I feel sure that was originally written as a poem without music, probably around the turn of the century (19th--20th, that is). It's not in the on-line Bartlett's from Project Bartleby, but you might try more recent paper quotation dictionaries and anthologies. If I had to guess at the author, I'd say it was Arthur Symons.

Subject: RE: Lyric Req: We are the music makers, we are
From: Bill Day
Date: 05 Jan 97 - 06:42 PM

yep...it is an old poem....and there are 4 or 5 melodies floating around....and I think the best melody was written by Bob Clayton of Silver Spring Md...it's not on a commercial rape, but if you want, I'll put you in touch....( his melody and guitar arrangement are top-notch!)

Subject: RE: Lyric Req: We are the music makers, we are
From: Bill Day
Date: 05 Jan 97 - 07:00 PM

*sigh*...why can't I ever make an innocuous typo!!!!(sorry about that...I'm saving my pennies for touch-typing lessons)

Subject: RE: Lyric Req: We are the music makers, we are
From:
Date: 06 Jan 97 - 10:43 AM

Thanks Bill, I'd love to get a copy of the Bob Clayton tape. Please let me know where I could contact him. I can be e-mailed at [e-mail]. (I also appreciate your sensitivity about your typo. It did give me pause for just a second.) - M

Subject: RE: Lyric Req: We are the music makers, we are
From: Jerry Friedman
Date: 06 Jan 97 - 12:21 PM

Maybe that was Arthur Hugh CLOUGH, not Arthur SYMONS. Totally different head.

Subject: RE: Lyric Req: We are the music makers, we are
From: lamarca
Date: 09 Jan 97 - 05:40 PM

The poem is called "Ode"; I think the author's name was Arthur O'Shaunnessy or Shaunnessy(sp?). Various combinations of the verses have been set to music by the above-mentioned Bob Clayton, Lorraine Lee, Bob Zentz (of Ramblin' Conrad's in Norfolk, VA), Jake Walton and who knows who else. The Washington, DC area folk society has an annual fall weekend in October, and one year Lorraine Lee and the two Bobs all got together and compared notes on the different tunes they had written for the same words...

Subject: RE: Lyric Req: We are the music makers, we are
From:
Date: 13 Dec 06 - 01:58 AM

From Modern British Poetry. 1920.

Arthur O'Shaughnessy. 1844–1881
 
6. 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 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.