Ode (O'Shaughnessy)
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Ode is a poem written in 1874 by the English poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy. It is often referred to by its first line We are the music makers.
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The Ode is the first poem in O'Shaughnessy's collection Music and Moonlight. It has nine stanzas, although many people to whom it is familiar believe that the poem is only three stanzas long[citation needed]. The opening stanza begins:
- We are the music makers,
- And we are the dreamers of dreams,
- Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
- And sitting by desolate streams;...
The words have inspired many people and have been admired by many poets, including W. B. Yeats[citation needed]. They have been set to music, or alluded to, many times:
- Edward Elgar's The Music Makers, op.69, uses the entire poem.
- The Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály also made a setting.
- The 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory quotes its first two lines, in this exchange:
- Willy Wonka: "The strawberries taste like strawberries. The snozzberries taste like snozzberries."
- Veruca Salt: "Snozzberries? Who ever heard of a snozzberry?"
- Willy Wonka: "We are the music makers... and we are the dreamers of dreams."
- The opening line has been used as the title of an album by Joy Electric, a track of Selected Ambient Works 85-92, by Aphex Twin, and the New York band We Are the Music Makers.
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