Arthur O'Shaughnessy

this blog took its name by the second line of Arthur O'Shaughnessy's "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.

The ode was set to music by Sir Edward Elgar in 1912.

Some others used phrases of "Ode"


* In the movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, after Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) states that "The snozberries taste like snozzberries", Veruca Salt responds in an arrogant tone, "Snozberries? Who ever heard of a snozberry?". Willy Wonka grabs her mouth and replies, "We are the music makers, and We are the dreamers of dreams."

* Joy Electric's 1996 album We Are the Music Makers is a reference to the first line.

* The track "Nephatiti" from 808 State's album Ex:el, one of many early genre defining explorations in techno music, uses an audio sample (sample (material)) of Willy Wonka saying "We are the music makers, and We are the dreamers of dreams."

* The track "Movers And Shakers" by Eden Burning begins with a setting of the first stanza of the Ode.

* The track Nothing Less (Ft. Slug) by Living Legend also uses the first two lines of this ode.

* The track "We Are the Music Makers" by Aphex Twin starts off with a low fi sample from Willy Wonka before the drum kicks in.

* The track "Reflector" on the album Geräuschinformatik by Autoaggression contains the entire first stanza of the Ode, and part of the final stanza.

* The phrase "movers and shakers" commonly used in the realms of business and politics to describe a person who is highly influential within their field (phrase began to gain currency around 1972) was borrowed from this poem.

source:wikipedia