| 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, | 5 |
| 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, | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| 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; | 20 |
| 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. |
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