Mother of Muses

Mother of Muses is the 7th song off of Bob Dylan's 39th studio album Rough and Rowdy Ways. The song is a calm, mellow song like "I Contain Multitudes" and "I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You", and references Greek epics (like Homer's Iliad and Odyssey) in where the poet calls upon a muse to tell the story of the epic. Dylan is definitely familiar with the epic, as he references it a lot in his 2016 Nobel Prize speech.

Background
The song is about muses, and how they work to create famous works of art including books, music, and art. The song references 5 famous generals (William T. Sherman, Bernard Montgomery, Winfield Scott, Georgy Zhukov, and George S. Patton), actual muses from Greek mythology (Calliope), and the last verse references songs from dead collaborators - again, bringing up the theme of mortality. It references 4 songs by his late friend Leonard Cohen in the last verse.

Mnemosyne is the goddess of memory and was the mother of the 9 Greek Muses, so Mnemosyne is the mother of Muses Dylan keeps referring to. "Sing for me" means that the narrator is growing old and needs her to sing for him (as in sing to the people as him, not sing to him)

Music
This song is in A major, and features Blake Mills on electric guitar, Tony Garnier on acoustic bass, and Matt Chamberlain on bass drum. Chamberlain barely makes an appearance, playing the bass drum with a mallet twice during the track. Dylan Review says the song " ... whose ponderal beat and modal harmony give it the sound of a Celtic dirge."

Personnel

 * Bob Dylan – vocals
 * Blake Mills – electric guitar
 * Tony Garnier – acoustic bass
 * Matt Chamberlain – bass drum