Arthur O’Shaughnessy

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Arthur O’Shaughnessy (1844-1881) was a British poet best known for his much-anthologized “Ode.” O’Shaughnessy became a copyist in the library of the British Museum at age 17 and later became a herpetologist in the museum’s zoological department. He published four volumes of verse—An Epic of Women (1870), Lays of France (1872), Music and Moonlight (1874), and Songs of a Worker (1881)—and, with his wife, a volume of stories for children, Toyland (1875). O’Shaughnessy was strongly influenced by the artists and writers of the Pre-Raphaelite group, by contemporary French poetry, and by Algernon Charles Swinburne. O’Shaughnessy is chiefly remembered for the otherworldly later work that links him with the Symbolist movement. Source

 

excerpt from "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.

 

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.

 

A breath of our inspiration

Is the life of each generation;

    A wondrous thing of our dreaming

    Unearthly, impossible seeming —

The soldier, the king, and the peasant

    Are working together in one,

Till our dream shall become their present,

    And their work in the world be done.

Published:

1873

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Symbolism

Anthology Years:

2025

Themes:

Agency

Faith & Hope

Music & Sports

Poetic Form

Strength & Resilience

Literary Devices:

End Rhyme

when a poem has lines ending with words that sound the same

Ode

a lyric poem in the form of an address to a particular subject, often elevated in style or manner and written in varied or irregular meter

Polyptoton

The use of multiple words with the same root in different forms.

Rhyme

correspondence of sound between words or the endings of words, especially when these are used at the ends of lines of poetry

Transferred Epithet

When an adjective usually used to describe one thing is transferred to another.