The Artists [.ART.]

We are the music makers<br>And we are the dreamers of dreams,<br>Wandering by lone sea-breakers <br>And sitting by desolate streams;<br>World-losers and world-forsakers<br>On whom the pale moon gleams. <br>Yet we are the movers and shakers<br>Of the world forever, it seems. <br><br>With wonderful, deathless ditties <br>We build up the world's great cities<br>And out of a fabulous story <br>We fashion an empire's glory.<br>One man with a dream, at pleasure, <br>Can go forth and conquer a crown,<br>But three with a new song's measure <br>Can trample his empire down. <br><br>We, in the ages lying <br>In the burried past of the earth<br>Built Nineveh with our singing<br>And Babel itself with our mirth. <br>And o'erthrew them with prophesying<br>For the old and the new world's worth;<br>For each age is a dream that is dying<br>Or one that it coming to birth. <br><br>A breath of our inspiration <br>Is the life of each generation;<br>A wonderous thing of our dreaming--<br>Unearthly, impossible seeming--<br>The soldier, the king and the peasant<br>Are working together as one,<br>'Till our dream shall become their present<br>And their work in the world be done. <br><br>They had no vision amazing<br>Of the goodly house they were raising;<br>They had no divine foreshowing<br>Of the land to which they were going. <br>But on one man's soul it hath broken:<br>A light that doth not depart;<br>And his look, or a word he hath spoken, <br>Wrought flame in another man's heart. <br><br>And therefore today is thrilling<br>With a past day's late fulfilling. <br>And the multitudes are enlisted <br>In the faith that their fathers resisted;<br>And, scorning the dream of tomorrow, <br>They are bringing to pass, as they may,<br>In the world, for its joy or its sorrow, <br>The dream that was scorned yesterday. <br><br>But we, with our dreaming and singing--<br>Ceaseless and sorrowless we!--<br>The glory about us clinging<br>Of the glorious futures we see,<br>Our souls, with high music ringing:<br>O men, it must ever be<br>The we dwell in our dreaming and singing <br>A little apart from ye. <br><br>For we are afar with the dawning<br>And the suns that are not yet high,<br>And out of the infinite morning,<br>Intrepid you hear us cry;<br>How, in spite of your human scorning, <br>Once more the future draws nigh,<br>And already goes forth the warning<br>That ye of the past must die.<br><br>Great Hail! We cry to the comers<br>From the dazzling, unknown shore, <br>Bring us hither your sun and your summers<br>And renew our world as of yore;<br>You shall teach us your song's new numbers<br>And things that we dreampt not before.<br>Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers<br>And a singer who sings no more.