Mnemosyne was the personification of memory in Greek mythology and - fascinatingly - the mother of all nine Muses! I don't know if that is revealing of how the Greeks viewed the arts and sciences, but I find it fascinating. It does pose the question of whether art can exist in a vacuum, isolated from experience, influence and memory and whether imagination as an artistic quality might be overrated.
But that's not what the poem is about. The poem is about loss made more bitter by the sweetness of memory. It's not a "nature poem" the way most refer to them - it's not lovingly describing exactly how the weather felt or the animals looked
And if you can't get down with that, there's not a human bone in your sad little body.
Mnemosyne
Trumbull Stickney
How warm a wind blew here about the ways!
And shadows on the hillside lay to slumber
During the long sun-sweetened summer-days.
It’s cold abroad the country I remember.
The swallows veering skimmed the golden grain
At midday with a wing aslant and limber;
And yellow cattle browsed upon the plain.
It’s empty down the country I remember.
I had a sister lovely in my sight:
Her hair was dark, her eyes were very sombre;
We sang together in the woods at night.
It’s lonely in the country I remember.
The babble of our children fills my ears,
And on our hearth I stare the perished ember
To flames that show all starry thro’ my tears.
It’s dark about the country I remember.
There are the mountains where I lived. The path
Is slushed with cattle-tracks and fallen timber,
The stumps are twisted by the tempests’ wrath.
But that I knew these places are my own,
I’d ask how came such wretchedness to cumber
The earth, and I to people it alone.
It rains across the country I remember.
I did find that it helped to grasp the poem if you have this view while you're reading it:
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