In 1874, Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessey published a collection of poems called Music and Moonlight. Among them was a poem, Ode, that will be familiar to many, although most people know only the first couple of stanzas: We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams, wandering by lone sea breakers and sitting by desolate streams…

It’s a beautiful poem of perpetual change and the role of words and wordsmiths in revolution. This stanza, in particular, seems relevant to this year, these months, these days:

And therefore to-day is thrilling
With a past day’s late fulfilling;
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.