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 worl'd 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.

A.W.E. O'Shaughnessy

Song: 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.

A.W.E. O'Shaughnessy

Song: Summer Has Come Without the Rose

HAS summer come without the rose,

Or left the bird behind?

Is the blue changed above thee,

O world! or am I blind?

Will you change every flower that grows,

Or only change this spot,

Where she who said, I love thee,

Now says, I love thee not?

The skies seemed true above thee,

The rose true on the tree;

The bird seemed true the summer through,

But all proved false to me.

A.W.E. O'Shaughnessy

A Love Symphony

ALONG the garden ways just now

I heard the flowers speak;

The white rose told me of your brow,

The red rose of your cheek;

The lily of your bended head,

The bindweed of your hair:

Each looked its loveliest and said

You were more fair.

I went into the wood anon,

And heard the wild birds sing

How sweet you were; they warbled on,

Piped, trilled the self-same thing.

Thrush, blackbird, linnet, without pause,

The burden did repeat,

And still began again because

You were more sweet.

And then I went down to the sea,

And heard it murmuring too,

Part of an ancient mystery,

All made of me and you.

How many a thousand years ago

I loved, and you were sweet--

Longer I could not stay, and so

I fled back to your feet.

A.W.E. O'Shaughnessy