O’SHAUGNESSY, Arthur

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.

I made another garden

I made another garden, yea,

For my new love;

I left the dead rose where it lay,

And set the new above.

Why did the summer not begin?

Why did my heart not haste?

My old love came and walked therein,

And laid the garden waste.

She entered with her weary smile,

Just as of old;

She looked around a little while,

And shivered at the cold.

Her passing touch was death to all,

Her passing look a blight:

She made the white rose-petals fall,

And turned the red rose white.

Her pale robe, clinging to the grass,

Seemed like a snake

That bit the grass and ground, alas!

And a sad trail did make.

She went up slowly to the gate;

And there, just as of yore,

She turned back at the last to wait,

And say farewell once more.