Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, QUEM TU, MELPOMENE, by MARGARET LOUISA WOODS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

QUEM TU, MELPOMENE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Ah, no! You never loved the muse
Last Line: The happy shepherd she has blest.
Alternate Author Name(s): Woods, Mrs. Margaret Louisa Bradley
Subject(s): Hearts; Love - Complaints; Poetry & Poets


AH, no! You never loved the Muse,
Then wherefore should the Muse love you?
Immortal maiden, free to choose,
She does as the Immortals do.
By amber morns and red moon-rises
She roams the land in fair disguises,
And hears the happy shepherd woo.

The twilight's solitary tongue,
The May-time and the flowering thorn,
Old songs of poets newly sung,
Old oaths of lovers newly sworn,
Are sweet to her who ne'er remembers
How every fire will leave but embers,
And knows not that the world's outworn.

The joy of larks that greet the day,
The long cry of the nightingale,
Are hers, as up the eastern way
She meets the air of dawn, the frail
First sunbeams on the dewy grasses,
And ever singing, singing passes
To bid him come who cannot fail.

Ere yet she stands beside his door
Out leaps the shepherd, morning-young.
"O maid, where have we met before?
Where did you learn the song you sung?"
So hand in hand with mingled tresses
And happy sighs and half-caresses,
They dream the quiet fields among.

At eve, when sifted snows are white,
By solitary ways she goes.
The lonely house upon the height,
The lonely hearth and him she knows.
The dying embers drop together,
Cold, cold without the wintry weather,
And on his hair lie chiller snows.

She flits about the shadowed room.
"O art thou Age, thou hooded guest,
Or Death?" he questions in the gloom:
And then his head is on her breast.
The roof-tree buds, the roses cover
The Muse, the young triumphant lover,
The happy shepherd she has blest.





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