Literary Devices

Arthur O'Shaughnessy's "We Are the Music Makers" (the opening of his "Ode") uses repetition, alliteration, paradox, hyperbole, metaphor, allusion, imagery and musical rhyme to celebrate the power of artists and dreamers. This lesson explains each device with examples from the poem.

The poem's confident, chant-like voice comes from the repeated "we" at the start of its lines, and its music from alliteration such as "music makers" and "deathless ditties" and from its two-syllable rhymes. Paradox and antithesis show dreamers who withdraw from the world yet move and shape it, and builders who also overthrow; hyperbole claims that one dreamer can conquer a crown and three singers can trample a kingdom. Metaphor turns poets into builders and whole ages into dreams, allusions to Nineveh and Babel bring in ancient empires, and lonely images of sea-breakers, desolate streams and a pale moon suggest the solitude of the artist. Together these devices make the poem sound like the music it praises.

Literary Devices in "We Are the Music Makers"

Overview

The poem studied here is the opening of "Ode" by Arthur O'Shaughnessy (1844–1881), first published in 1873 and placed at the start of his collection Music and Moonlight (1874). The three stanzas usually studied, each of eight lines, celebrate poets, musicians and dreamers as the true makers and breakers of civilisations. Because the poem praises music, its devices are chosen to make it sound musical, and because it praises dreamers, its images and claims are bold and visionary. Some devices, such as the refrain-like repetition, alliteration and assonance, symbolism and tone, have their own lessons; this lesson surveys all the main devices and how they work together.

1. Anaphora and Repetition

• Anaphora is the repetition of a word at the start of successive lines or clauses. "We" opens the poem and keeps returning: we are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams, we build, we fashion, and the third stanza opens with "We" again.
• The repeated "we" turns the poem into a collective declaration, like a manifesto or a chant, and it works almost like a refrain, binding the stanzas together.

2. Alliteration and Other Sound Patterns

• Alliteration repeats initial consonant sounds: "music makers", "dreamers of dreams", "deathless ditties", "fabulous story ... fashion", "conquer a crown", and the b sounds of "Built" and "Babel".
• The first and third stanzas chime with repeated vowel sounds in their rhymes (dreams, streams, gleams, seems; lying, sighing, prophesying, dying), which gives the lines a sustained, singing quality.

3. Paradox and Antithesis

• Paradox: the dreamers are "World-losers and world-forsakers", yet they are the movers and shakers of the world. Those who seem to withdraw from the world turn out to be the ones who change it.
• Antithesis sets opposites side by side: building Nineveh "with our sighing" and Babel "in our mirth"; building cities and then overthrowing them; and an age that is "a dream that is dying" against one "coming to birth".

4. Hyperbole

• The poem makes deliberately exaggerated claims: with wonderful deathless ditties the dreamers build up the world's great cities, one man with a dream can go forth and conquer a crown, and three with a new song can trample a kingdom down.
• The exaggeration expresses the poet's faith that ideas and art are stronger than armies and kings.

5. Metaphor and Symbolism

• Metaphor: artists are pictured as builders and conquerors, and whole historical ages are described as dreams that die or are born.
• Symbolism: the music makers stand for all creative people, poets, musicians and visionaries; the lonely sea-breakers and desolate streams suggest the solitude of the artist; and the pale moon suggests imagination and dreaming.

6. Allusion

• Nineveh was the capital of the ancient Assyrian empire, destroyed in 612 BCE, and Babel recalls the Tower of Babel in the Book of Genesis and the great city of Babylon.
• By claiming that the dreamers built these places and then overthrew them with prophesying, the poem suggests that every empire is first imagined and finally undone by visionaries.

7. Imagery

• Visual and sound images in the first stanza, waves breaking on a lonely shore, desolate streams, the pale moon gleaming, create a quiet, moonlit, solitary atmosphere.
• In the second stanza the images become grand and active: great cities, an empire's glory, a crown and a kingdom trampled down.

8. Rhyme, Rhythm and Form

• The first and third stanzas rhyme ABABABAB, using only two rhyme sounds each, while the second rhymes AABBCDCD.
• Most rhymes are feminine (two-syllable) rhymes, with the stress on the second-last syllable: makers, breakers, forsakers, shakers; ditties, cities; story, glory; pleasure, measure. These give the lines a soft, lilting fall.
• The short lines move with a swinging, song-like rhythm, and enjambment carries the sense from one line into the next, as when the movers and shakers are completed by the following line "Of the world for ever, it seems".
• The poem's title, "Ode", names its form: a lyric of praise in an elevated style.

Conclusion

Every device in the poem serves its central claim that artists and dreamers shape history. Repetition makes the claim sound like a chorus, sound patterns make it musical, paradox and hyperbole make it bold, and metaphor and allusion stretch it across the whole of human history. Even everyday language has absorbed it: the phrase "movers and shakers" comes from this poem.