Famous Melpomene Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Melpomene poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous melpomene poems. These examples illustrate what a famous melpomene poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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How one most lowly born upon the parched Apulian plains
First raised the native lyric muse to glory.
Assume, revered Melpomene, the proud estate I've won,
And, with thine own dear hand the meed supplying,
Bind thou about the forehead of thy celebrated son
The Delphic laurel-wreath of fame undying!...Read more of this...
by
Field, Eugene
...f from the lion's lair,
And now lies dead by that empyreal dome
Which overtops Valdarno hung in air
By Brunelleschi - O Melpomene
Breathe through thy melancholy pipe thy sweetest threnody!
Breathe through the tragic stops such melodies
That Joy's self may grow jealous, and the Nine
Forget awhile their discreet emperies,
Mourning for him who on Rome's lordliest shrine
Lit for men's lives the light of Marathon,
And bare to sun-forgotten fields the fire of the sun!
O guard him...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...eauty in all things—no, we cannot hope for that; but some place set apart for it.
Here it may dwell;
And with your aid, Melpomene
And all thy sister-muses (for ye are, I think, daughters of Memory)
Within the tortured mind as well.
Reaped are those fields with dragon's-teeth so lately sown;
Many the heaped men dying there - so close, hip touches thigh; yet each man dies alone.
Music, what overtone
For the soft ultimate sigh or the unheeded groan
Hast thou—to make death decen...Read more of this...
by
St. Vincent Millay, Edna
...oms,
Tinting with silver wan your marble tombs.
LVI.
Moan hither, all ye syllables of woe,
From the deep throat of sad Melpomene!
Through bronzed lyre in tragic order go,
And touch the strings into a mystery;
Sound mournfully upon the winds and low;
For simple Isabel is soon to be
Among the dead: She withers, like a palm
Cut by an Indian for its juicy balm.
LVII.
O leave the palm to wither by itself;
Let not quick Winter chill its dying hour!--
It may not be--those Baalites...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...The forest bitter, spiky,
no shore breeze, no foothills,
the grass grows matted, death will come
with horses' hooves, endlessly
over the steppes' mounds, we went back,
searching the sky for the fort
that could not be razed.
The villages hostile,
the cottages cleared out in haste,
smoked skin on the attic beams,
snare netting, bone amulets.
All over the co...Read more of this...
by
Huchel, Peter
...vermore I follow wistfully,
Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;
Thalia, not you,
Not you, Melpomene,
Not your incomparable feet, O thin Terpsichore, I seek in this great hall,
But one more pale, more pensive, most beloved of you all.
I seek her from afar,
I come from temples where her altars are,
From groves that bear her name,
Noisy with stricken victims now and sacrificial flame,
And cymbals struck on high and strident faces
Obstreperous in her...Read more of this...
by
St. Vincent Millay, Edna
...if 'tis sufficiently moist."
"But do ye also exhibit the graceful dance of Thalia,
Joined to the solemn step with which Melpomene moves?"--
"Neither! For naught we love but what is Christian and moral;
And what is popular, too, homely, domestic, and plain."
"What? Does no Caesar, does no Achilles, appear on your stage now,
Not an Andromache e'en, not an Orestes, my friend?"
"No! there is naught to be seen there but parsons,
and syndics of commerce,
Secretaries perchance, ensi...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...baffling tombs;
Closed for aye the epics of Asia’s, Europe’s helmeted warriors;
Calliope’s call for ever closed—Clio, Melpomene, Thalia closed and dead;
Seal’d the stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana—ended the quest of the Holy Graal;
Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind—extinct;
The Crusaders’ streams of shadowy, midnight troops, sped with the sunrise;
Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone—Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone,
Palmerin, ogre, departed—vanish’d the turrets...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...lone dishonoured House and weeps, perchance for me?
O Memory cast down thy wreathed shell!
Break thy hoarse lute O sad Melpomene!
O Sorrow, Sorrow keep thy cloistered cell
Nor dim with tears this limpid Castaly!
Cease, Philomel, thou dost the forest wrong
To vex its sylvan quiet with such wild impassioned song!
Cease, cease, or if 't is anguish to be dumb
Take from the pastoral thrush her simpler air,
Whose jocund carelessness doth more become
This English woodland than thy...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...flight with momentary sound.
Nor let me fail to cultivate my mind
With the soft thrillings of the tragic Muse,
Divine Melpomene, sweet Pity's nurse,
Queen of the stately step, and flowing pall.
Now let Monimia mourn streaming eyes
Her joys incestuous, and polluted love:
Now let soft Juliet in the gaping tomb
Print the last kiss on her true Romeo's lips,
His lips yet reeking from the deadly draught:
Or Jaffier kneel for one forgiving look.
Nor seldom let the Moor on Desdemon...Read more of this...
by
Warton, Thomas
...either Fear nor Wit;
In Panegyrick been so spurr'd
He cou'd not from the Stall be stirr'd,
Nor wou'd endure the Bit.
Melpomene had given a Bond,
By the new House alone to stand,
And write of War and Strife;
Thalia, she had taken Fees,
And Stipends from the Patentees,
And durst not for her Life.
Urania only lik'd the Choice;
Yet not to thwart the publick Voice,
She whisp'ring did impart:
They need no Foreign Aid invoke,
No help to draw a moving Stroke,
Who dictate from ...Read more of this...
by
Finch, Anne Kingsmill
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