Dreamers of Dreams

My poems are a disorganized mess. I really need to find some way of organizing them and keep track of which ones I’ve shared already and which ones I haven’t. At one time I had a blog dedicated to poetry forms and I was writing one a week, but I found the pace a little hard to keep up and the poems suffered because of it.

Last year I only wrote 25 new poems but I like to think it was quality over quantity. This year I unfortunately haven’t been keeping track, so I can only guess that I’ve written about a dozen or so. Again, I need to find a way of keeping track.

At any rate, if you write poetry the chances are good that you also read a lot of poetry, like I do. And there’s nothing I enjoy more than discovering a new poem or poet. So I’ve decided that I’m going to start sharing some of my favourite poems once a month, starting with a today.

I’m pretty sure a lot of you have read this poem before, but even if you haven’t I’m sure you’ll all agree that you don’t have to be a poet to enjoy it. Whether you write poetry or not, I think all writers are dreamers of dreams.

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,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, 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 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;
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.

Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy