The Full Text of “Ode (We are the music makers)”
1We are the music makers,
2 And we are the dreamers of dreams,
3Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
4 And sitting by desolate streams; —
5World-losers and world-forsakers,
6 On whom the pale moon gleams:
7Yet we are the movers and shakers
8 Of the world for ever, it seems.
9With wonderful deathless ditties
10We build up the world's great cities,
11 And out of a fabulous story
12 We fashion an empire's glory:
13One man with a dream, at pleasure,
14 Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
15And three with a new song's measure
16 Can trample a kingdom down.
17We, in the ages lying,
18 In the buried past of the earth,
19Built Nineveh with our sighing,
20 And Babel itself in our mirth;
21And o'erthrew them with prophesying
22 To the old of the new world's worth;
23For each age is a dream that is dying,
24 Or one that is coming to birth.
25A breath of our inspiration
26Is the life of each generation;
27 A wondrous thing of our dreaming
28 Unearthly, impossible seeming —
29The soldier, the king, and the peasant
30 Are working together in one,
31Till our dream shall become their present,
32 And their work in the world be done.
33They had no vision amazing
34Of the goodly house they are raising;
35 They had no divine foreshowing
36 Of the land to which they are going:
37But on one man's soul it hath broken,
38 A light that doth not depart;
39And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
40 Wrought flame in another man's heart.
41And therefore to-day is thrilling
42With a past day's late fulfilling;
43 And the multitudes are enlisted
44 In the faith that their fathers resisted,
45And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,
46 Are bringing to pass, as they may,
47In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
48 The dream that was scorned yesterday.
49But we, with our dreaming and singing,
50 Ceaseless and sorrowless we!
51The glory about us clinging
52 Of the glorious futures we see,
53Our souls with high music ringing:
54 O men! it must ever be
55That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,
56 A little apart from ye.
57For we are afar with the dawning
58 And the suns that are not yet high,
59And out of the infinite morning
60 Intrepid you hear us cry —
61How, spite of your human scorning,
62 Once more God's future draws nigh,
63And already goes forth the warning
64 That ye of the past must die.
65Great hail! we cry to the comers
66 From the dazzling unknown shore;
67Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
68 And renew our world as of yore;
69You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
70 And things that we dreamed not before:
71Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
72 And a singer who sings no more.
The Full Text of “Ode (We are the music makers)”
1We are the music makers,
2 And we are the dreamers of dreams,
3Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
4 And sitting by desolate streams; —
5World-losers and world-forsakers,
6 On whom the pale moon gleams:
7Yet we are the movers and shakers
8 Of the world for ever, it seems.
9With wonderful deathless ditties
10We build up the world's great cities,
11 And out of a fabulous story
12 We fashion an empire's glory:
13One man with a dream, at pleasure,
14 Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
15And three with a new song's measure
16 Can trample a kingdom down.
17We, in the ages lying,
18 In the buried past of the earth,
19Built Nineveh with our sighing,
20 And Babel itself in our mirth;
21And o'erthrew them with prophesying
22 To the old of the new world's worth;
23For each age is a dream that is dying,
24 Or one that is coming to birth.
25A breath of our inspiration
26Is the life of each generation;
27 A wondrous thing of our dreaming
28 Unearthly, impossible seeming —
29The soldier, the king, and the peasant
30 Are working together in one,
31Till our dream shall become their present,
32 And their work in the world be done.
33They had no vision amazing
34Of the goodly house they are raising;
35 They had no divine foreshowing
36 Of the land to which they are going:
37But on one man's soul it hath broken,
38 A light that doth not depart;
39And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
40 Wrought flame in another man's heart.
41And therefore to-day is thrilling
42With a past day's late fulfilling;
43 And the multitudes are enlisted
44 In the faith that their fathers resisted,
45And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,
46 Are bringing to pass, as they may,
47In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
48 The dream that was scorned yesterday.
49But we, with our dreaming and singing,
50 Ceaseless and sorrowless we!
51The glory about us clinging
52 Of the glorious futures we see,
53Our souls with high music ringing:
54 O men! it must ever be
55That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,
56 A little apart from ye.
57For we are afar with the dawning
58 And the suns that are not yet high,
59And out of the infinite morning
60 Intrepid you hear us cry —
61How, spite of your human scorning,
62 Once more God's future draws nigh,
63And already goes forth the warning
64 That ye of the past must die.
65Great hail! we cry to the comers
66 From the dazzling unknown shore;
67Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
68 And renew our world as of yore;
69You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
70 And things that we dreamed not before:
71Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
72 And a singer who sings no more.
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“Ode (We are the music makers)” Introduction
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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."
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“Ode (We are the music makers)” Summary
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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 dreams give 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.
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“Ode (We are the music makers)” Themes
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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.
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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.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Ode (We are the music makers)”
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Lines 1-8
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."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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Lines 9-16
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 a kingdom down. -
Lines 17-20
We, in the ages lying,
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth; -
Lines 21-24
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. -
Lines 25-32
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. -
Lines 33-40
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. -
Lines 41-48
And therefore to-day 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. -
Lines 49-56
But we, 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. -
Lines 57-64
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. -
Lines 65-72
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.
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“Ode (We are the music makers)” Symbols
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Oceans and Rivers
Oceans and rivers represent both the current of history and the mysterious sources of intuition and inspiration. Rivers, with their constant motion, are common symbols of the flow of time and history, while the mysterious depth and power of the ocean often symbolizes the subconscious or the unknown. The "music makers" of this poem seem to draw much of their thought from these two differing kinds of water, seeing themselves as related both to the world's ceaseless movement into the future and to deep human truths that most can't reach. The final stanza, in which the speakers imagine visionary visitors coming to them "[f]rom the dazzling unknown shore," brings that point home: these inspiring visitors must travel to artists over far-off, mysterious seas.
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The Moon
The moon is an ancient symbol of dreams and mystery, and as such it's a perfect light for the lonesome "dreamers of dreams" to wait beneath for their inspiration. While there's plenty of imagery of glorious sunlight here, too (see the rest of the "Symbols" section for more on that), the appearance of the moon in the first stanza suggests that artistic inspiration isn't all blazing inspiration. There's also a quieter and more mysterious kind of waiting involved, guided by the changeable moon rather than the emphatic sun. The poem's interest in the paradox of change—it's the only eternal thing there is!—also makes the moon a fitting symbol for the artist's prophetic understanding.
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The Sun, Light, and Fire
Images of blazing sunlight and flame flare up all over this poem. The sun, with its awe-inspiring power to create and maintain life and light, often symbolizes inspiration and vision—illuminations both literal and figurative. Here, it turns up in the form of "suns that are not yet high," visions yet to come when the "suns and the summers" of the future arrive.
The power of the sun appears as both light and fire. The "light" that the artist perceives in line 37 kindles "flame," becoming physical and contagious as it passes from the artist to the world around him:
A light that doth not depart;
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man's heart.Flame has the power to warm, of course, but it also has the power to destroy. Part of the symbolism around fire and flames here is to do with one of the poem's big points: the old world must die for the new world to arise. The symbolism of the sun, light, and fire thus suggest the connections between creation and destruction, the way that new visions demand the overthrow of the old.
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Cities and Buildings
The artistic "music makers" of this poem speak of their work in terms of inspiration and illumination. But the actual work of their inspiration is to change the shape of the world, and the cities and buildings of the poem symbolize the real, physical change that comes from artists' intangible visions.
The poem deals in generic "goodly houses"—symbolically, new places to live, built by the normal people that art inspires with its visions of a changed world. But it also evokes the more specific cities of Babel and Nineveh, and with them, the idea that all that is human both rises and falls.
In the Bible, Nineveh was a sinful city that repented when the prophet Jonah warned of its destruction; Babel was the city that built a prideful tower that sought to reach heaven (and was punished for its hubris with confusion). Together, these cities symbolize the roller coaster movement of all human achievement. Both of these cities were real places, too, not just legends—a telling fact when one considers that the stories about them have outlived the actual places. This is yet another instance of the enduring power of art. (See the "allusion" section of "Poetic Devices" for more on the biblical cities.)
The construction and destruction of cities, here, thus represent concrete change in how every human lives, driven and maintained by artistic vision.
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Music and song
Music is perhaps the most prominent symbol in this "Ode." While the poem seems to be talking about all kinds of artists, it most often thinks of art in terms of singing. Music is the least representative art form (that is, it doesn't have a visible shape, only a sound) and is thus a useful way to represent something as hard to depict as pure emotion or transcendent experience. The music of this poem represents the way that artists translate their ineffable visions into, well, art: into forms that everyone can feel and follow, even if they can't see the artists' visions first-hand. When the speakers sing that three artists "with a new song's measure" can overthrow a whole kingdom, they suggest the way that an artistic vision, made perceptible to others, can communicate its world-shaking power.
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“Ode (We are the music makers)” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
The repeated initial sounds of alliteration—among other kinds of repetition—play a big part in this poem's melody and meaning. The frequent alliteration here helps to draw connections between important words, and to create the poem's rolling, musical sound.
Look no further than the famous first lines for a clear example:
We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,Here, alliteration links up "music" with the "makers" who create it, and "dreamers" with their "dreams." (The connection between "dreamers and "dreams" is also an example of polyptoton—more on that under "repetition.") Those linkages begin a pattern that will continue all through the poem, in which artists and their art seem so closely connected that it's sometimes hard to see a separation between them.
In some spots, alliteration makes images feel all the more forceful and urgent as well. Take lines 14 and 16, where the hard /c/ and /k/ sounds imbue the line itself with power and strength:
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
[...]
Can trample a kingdom down.The effect here is even clearer when considering that the same sound repeats within the word "conquer" itself (an example of consonance).
Repetitive sounds also fit in with the poem's ideas of artists as "music makers" more generally: they make these speakers' voices sound musical. Take a look at the alliteration in lines 65-68:
Great hail! we cry to the comers
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers;The melodic, attention-grabbing repetition of initial /c/ and /s/ sounds here helps to bring the poem to its climax.
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Allusion
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Apostrophe
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Assonance
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Metaphor
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Sibilance
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Metonymy
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Repetition
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"Ode (We are the music makers)" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Desolate
- Forsakers
- Fashion
- Measure
- Nineveh and Babel
- Mirth
- O'erthrew
- Goodly
- Foreshowing
- Hath, doth
- Ceaseless
- Ye
- Intrepid
- Nigh
- Hither
- Yore
- Numbers
- Yea
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Deserted or lonely.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Ode (We are the music makers)”
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Form
As the poem's title itself tells the reader, this is an ode—that is, a poem addressed to or in praise of a particular person, place, or thing. Here, the subject of this ode is, rather unusually, the singers of the ode themselves: this is an ode to artists, sung by artists.
Odes often use freer and more experimental shapes than other poetic forms allow, and this "Ode" is no exception."Ode" uses nine stanzas, each an eight-line octet. Within those stanzas, there's a combination of consistency and free-and-easy variation: two alternating patterns of rhyme combine with the flexibility of sprung rhythm to give the poem a buoyant, musical feeling. (Lots more on that in the "Meter" and "Rhyme Scheme" sections of this guide.) The poem's steady beat and changing but ever-present rhymes line up with its ideas: this "Ode" suggests that different artists may come and go, but they will always be a music-making, world-changing force, no matter where in human history one looks.
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Meter
The meter of this poem is, in one way, pretty predictable. Most lines uses trimeter, meaning they have three stressed beats, like this: "We are the music makers, / And we are the dreamers of dreams." But within that steady three-beat line, there are all kinds of different metrical feet. Take a look at those first two lines again:
We are the | music | makers,
And we | are the dream- | ers of dreams,The poem starts with front-loaded feet: a dactyl (DA-dum-dum) and two trochees (DA-dum). Then it switches round to back-loaded stresses with an iamb (da-DUM) and two anapests (da-da-DUM). Iambs and anapests are quite common in the poem, as can be seen in lines 7-8 of the same stanza:
Yet we | are the mov- | ers and shakers
Of the world | for ev- | er, it seems.This kind of metrical pattern, in which the feet are all over the place but the number of stressed beats stays relatively consistent, is called "sprung rhythm." It was popularized by the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins—who lived at almost exactly the same time as O'Shaughnessy, also born in 1844 and also dying young in the 1880s.
Sprung rhythm is meant to sound natural, coming closer to normal patterns of speech than a stricter meter might. Here, the naturalistic qualities of sprung rhythm work with the strong pulse of trimeter to create an easy, musical effect—evoking the joy and the energy of this chorus of artists living and dead.
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Rhyme Scheme
The musical rhyme scheme of "Ode" switches back and forth between two distinct patterns. The first stanza introduces this steady pattern:
ABABABAB
The second runs (using different rhyme sounds from the first):
AABBCDCD
Both of these patterns recur a few more times in the poem: the third, seventh, eighth, and ninth stanzas use the ABAB pattern, while the fourth, fifth, and sixth use the AABBCDCD.
These variations bring subtly different flavors to the poem. The back-and-forth of the ABAB stanzas creates an even, balanced, musical effect. In contrast, the initial rhyming couplets of the AABBCDCD stanzas sound insistent, seeming to speed the poem up.
These different patterns support the poem's varying, complicated moods. The stanzas that use the more urgent pattern of couplets are often about the glorious, inspiring, world-altering powers of the artist, while the more balanced ABAB stanzas have more to do with the more secretive, personal, and sometimes painful elements of an artist's life—like melancholy, isolation, mystery, and dreams.
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“Ode (We are the music makers)” Speaker
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The speaker here is a chorus: the whole collective of artists, past, present, and future. These artists sing of themselves, and share a vision of their role as "movers and shakers," people who alter the course of human history.
While this chorus of artists seems to take great pride and pleasure in the power of their artistry, there's also a hint of sadness in their reflections on their lives. They speak of wandering in lonely places, exiled from the rest of society. But if their work makes them outcasts, it also makes them special: they share a glorious destiny, and, as their singing here suggests, they have each other for company. The artistic community portrayed here stretches across time and space, crossing even the boundaries of death.
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“Ode (We are the music makers)” Setting
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While there isn't a single clear setting here, the poem sweeps through all of human history, and visits a variety of different landscapes on the way. References to the ancient cities of Nineveh and Babel place artists in important biblical stories, while artistic wanderings by "lone sea-breakers" and "desolate streams" suggest the inspirational power of nature. Artists, these images proclaim, find rich, deep experiences in all parts of the world, drawing their new visions both from civilization and wilderness.
Wherever this poem goes in the world, it finds glory and greatness. Much of the natural imagery here is to do with dazzling sunlight, summer, and blazing fire: this is a landscape of illumination, in which artists clearly see what's hidden to the average person.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Ode (We are the music makers)”
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Literary Context
Over the course of his short life, Arthur O'Shaughnessy (1844-1881) worked not only as a poet, but as a scientist, getting his start as a herpetologist in the British Museum. Though not many know his name today, his "Ode (We are the music makers)" continues to be both famous and influential, known for its lyrical first lines and for originating the idiom of "movers and shakers." First published in 1873, "Ode" also served as the first poem of O'Shaughnessy's 1874 collection "Music and Moonlight."
O'Shaughnessy wrote several volumes of well-received poetry, and was connected to the Pre-Raphaelite circle, a group of poets and visual artists who advocated for a return to the allegory and mystery of medieval art. O'Shaughnessy's work reflects the ideals of this school, but some scholars also see his work as a point of aesthetic and political connection between the revivalism of the Pre-Raphaelites and the stylized decadence of Art Nouveau.
Had he lived, he would have seen the rise (and fall) of Oscar Wilde—like O'Shaughnessy, an Irishman who made his home in London, and who shared his visionary idealism (though Wilde's was disguised by a veneer of arch wit). O'Shaughnessy was also an almost exact contemporary of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who shared his love of beauty and his transcendent religious vision.
O'Shaughnessy didn't get a lot of respect from his colleagues; one, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, even wrote a rather cruel limerick about the quality of his verse, and many of his fellow poets saw his scientific employment as suspect. O'Shaughnessy was indeed unusual among the Pre-Raphaelites for needing a day job, and his combination of the scientific and quotidian with the poetic and idealistic gave him a unique perspective.
O'Shaughnessy led a difficult life, losing two children as babies and dying himself at the young age of 36. Despite (or because) of his suffering, much of his poetry has a visionary gleam, singing of a glorious future.
The "Ode" is by far O'Shaughnessy's most enduring poem, and one can find references to it in everything from the movie "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" to the music of Edward Elgar and Aphex Twin.
Historical Context
Arthur O'Shaughnessy lived and wrote right in the heart of 19th-century England, during the reign of Queen Victoria. He died not too many years before Victoria herself did, and as such was a first-hand observer of a major shift in English culture.
The turmoil of the Industrial Revolution, in which a primarily rural and agricultural population and economy rapidly became primarily urban and factory-based, had begun to settle into normalcy by the time that O'Shaughnessy died, and new artistic and political movements arose in its wake.
Born and raised in London (though of Irish descent), O'Shaughnessy was well-placed to watch as the city became one of the most powerful and important in the world. He was also able to observe as the gap between the city's rich and poor populations grew ever wider. Like his contemporary William Morris, O'Shaughnessy was involved in workers' movements, and his political idealism—inflected by thinkers like Karl Marx—emerged in his poetry.
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More “Ode (We are the music makers)” Resources
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External Resources
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A Short Biography — Check out Britannica's entry on O'Shaughnessy.
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Gene Wilder Quotes the Poem — Gene Wilder, playing Willy Wonka, recites an excerpt from the poem. Just one demonstration of the mark the "Ode" has left on language and popular culture!
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The Aphex Twin Version of the Poem — A recent take on the poem by the ambient band Aphex Twin. O'Shaughnessy's most famous poem continues to leave its mark on art even today.
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An Essay on the Poem's Afterlife — Dr. Jordan Kistler, an O'Shaughnessy scholar, on how this poem has been received and remembered. A lot of people know this poem, but few know who wrote it!
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A Reading of the Poem — Hear the full poem read aloud.
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