Ode ~ Arthur O'Shaugnessy

"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"
- O'Shaugnessy, 1873, Music and Moonlight

Fascinating thing his Ode, is the first line has been used over a dozen times in song and film.  Of course, the line in Willy Wonka is arresting, but I enjoy Sodheim's Merrily We Roll Along, with "These are the movers / These are the shapers / These are the people / That fill the papers".  It is a delicious bit of alternating trimeter and tetrameter lines (odd is tri and feminine; even is tetra and masculine).

The poem is merely fun to say.  In feminine rhyme, we match two or more syllables at the end of the respective lines, and, where they are unstressed.  It has its roots, since it is sprung rhythm, in English folk songs.  The first beats are stressed with a variety of unstressed beats.  And why it feels as if you are singing, though you may be only speaking.

"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."

Henri Gervex Le Bal de l'Opera.