The Music Makers, an Ode Zoltán Kodály

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 a kingdom down

We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the earth

Built Nineveh with our sighing

And Babel itself in 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