Ode (poem)

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Ode is a poem written in 1874 by the English poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy. It is often referred to by its first line We are the music makers.

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Ode (O'Shaughnessy)

The Ode is the first poem in O'Shaughnessy's collection Music and Moonlight. It has nine stanzas, although many people to whom it is familiar believe that the poem is only three stanzas long. The opening stanza is:

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.

The words have inspired many people and have been admired by many poets, including W. B. Yeats^{[citation needed]}. They have been set to music, or alluded to, many times:

Edward Elgar's The Music Makers, op.69, uses the entire poem.
The Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály also made a setting.
English folk singer Vikki Clayton set the first three stanzas as the title track from her 1997 album 'Movers and Shakers'. [1]
The 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory quotes its first two lines, in this exchange:

Willy Wonka: "The strawberries taste like strawberries. The snozzberries taste like snozzberries."

Veruca Salt: "Snozzberries? Who ever heard of a snozzberry?"

Willy Wonka: "We are the music makers... and we are the dreamers of dreams."