Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy (March 14, 1844–January 30, 1881) was a British poet, born in London.

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 specialized 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.

O'Shaughnessy's poetry was relatively unknown in his own era, but its popularity has grown substantially in the 20th century. O'Shaughnessy has been associated with the rise of decadence.

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".

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 The Endless (comics), Eblis O'Shaughnessy.

Cultural references and parodies

• In the movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, after Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) states that "The snozberries taste like snozzberries", 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."

• 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 (sample (material)) 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 "We Are the Music Makers" by Aphex Twin starts off with a low fi sample from Willy Wonka before the drum kicks in.

• The track "Reflector" on the album Geräuschinformatik by Autoaggression contains the entire first stanza of the Ode, and part of the final stanza.

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)

References

• Arthur O'Shaughnessy: his life and his work, with selections from his poems (1894), by Louise Chandler Moulton

External links

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Arthur O'Shaughnessy

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