Arthur O'Shaughnessy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy (14 March 1844 – 30 January 1881) was a British poet, born in London to Irish parents[citation needed].

Contents

[edit] Biography

At the age of seventeen, in June 1861, he received the post of transcriber in the library of the British Museum, reportedly through the influence of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. Two years later, at the age of nineteen, he became an assistant in the natural history department, where he specialised in Ichthyology. However, his true passion was for literature. He published his first collection, Epic of Women, in 1870, and published two more collections of poetry in 1872 and 1874. When he was thirty he married and did not produce any more volumes of poetry for the last seven years of his life. His last volume, Songs of a Worker, was published posthumously in 1881.

Search Wikisource Wikisource has original text related to this article:

By far the most noted of any his works are the initial lines of the Ode from his book Music and Moonlight (1874):

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.

The artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown were among O'Shaughnessy's circle of friends, and in 1873 he married Eleanor Marston, the daughter of author John Westland Marston and sister of the poet Philip Bourke Marston. Together, he and his wife wrote a book of children's stories titled Toy-land (1875). They had two children together, both of whom died in infancy. Eleanor died in 1879, and O'Shaughnessy himself died in London two years later from the effects of a "chill". He is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.

The anthologist Francis Turner Palgrave in his work The Golden Treasury declared that of the modern poets, despite his limited output, O'Shaughnessy had a gift in some ways second only to Tennyson, and "a haunting music all his own". He was also alluded to by Neil Gaiman in his extremely popular series The Sandman in the guise of the envoy of the Endless, Eblis O'Shaughnessy.

[edit] Cultural references and parodies

  • In the movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, after Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) states that "The snozberries taste like snozberries", 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." A sample of this appears at the beginning of Bassnectar's album, Motions of Mutation.
  • In The show American Dad on Season 5 Episode 6.
  • 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 of Willy Wonka saying "We are the music makers, and We are the dreamers of dreams."
  • The track "Dream Makers" by Kuffdam & Plant uses an audio sample 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 Legends begins with the sample from Willy Wonka.
  • 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.
  • Echolyn's 1992 song "A Little Nonsense" contains a sample of Wonka saying the phrase.
  • 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.
  • The track "Music Makers" by ILS the track starts off with "We are the music makers, and We are the dreamers of dreams."
  • "The Music Makers" is a book written by E. V. Thompson. It is set in Ireland, and the first stanza of the ode is printed in the front of the book.
  • Quoted at the end of the movie, Last Summer in the Hamptons, 1995.
  • The line "We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams" is quoted in the song 'Jenny and Her Vega Machine' from the album 'Gipsy Street' by John McGurgan. The line is also adapted later within the song to "We make the music makers, we make the dreamers out of those dreams".
  • The initial verse is used at the start of Raymond E. Feist's novel, Rage of a Demon King.
  • In the Hollywood party scene in Stephen Sondheim's musical Merrily We Roll Along, the character of Mary, sardonically surveying the other guests, comments "These are the movers, These are the shapers, These are the people That fill the papers."
  • The poem is used in the introduction of Elizabeth Hayden's "The Assassin King"
  • Lines from the first stanza were used in advertisements for the Dell Studio line of notebook PCs.

[edit] Bibliography

  • An Epic of Women (1870)
  • Lays of France (1872)
  • Music and Moonlight: Poems and Songs (1874)
  • Toy-land (with Eleanor W. O'Shaughnessy) (1875)
  • Songs of a Worker (1881) (published posthumously)
  • Arthur O'Shaughnessy: a biography Molly Whittington-Egan (in progress) Rivendale Press

"We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of the dreams" used as the opening line in The Grouch and Eligh's "Sign of the Times"

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Search Wikiquote Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Arthur O'Shaughnessy
Search Wikisource Wikisource has original works written by or about: Arthur O'Shaughnessy
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_O%27Shaughnessy"