Sinister: 'wonderful deathless ditties'

[Jessica Murphy]

Wow...  I'm glad I asked.  Thanks to Archel, Turt and Lisa, this gap in my
knowledge has been filled *and* we all got to read a lovely poem.  Just
further proof of why the Sinister list is so great...  :)

jessica m

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 03 Oct 1998 13:23:59 +0100
From: Ian Turton <buffalo at xxx.uk>

Archel wrote:

> On Fri, 2 Oct 1998, Jessica Murphy wrote:
>
> > So, OK, while we're on the subject of Willy Wonka and poetry-quote
> > attributions, I think there's another line in the movie that comes from
> > somewhere else... when Mr. Wonka says, "We are the music makers, and we
> > are the dreamers of dreams."  (approximately; haven't seen it in a while.)
> >
> It's from a poem by Shaughnessy. Lovely it is too, though I just tried to
> remember the rest of it and can't. Something about sea breakers and
> sitting by desolate streams.

Close: half a cigar. It's Arthur O'Shaughnessy. Here's the full palaver. It's
called 'The Two Day Early Monday Poem No-One Asked Me For'. No it's not.

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.


Turt

the truth is lying next to you



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