PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

This is an original hypothesis:  that the Salome mentioned at being present at the Cross, and then, on Easter Morning, at the empty tomb, was, in fact, the stepdaughter of Herod Antipas, the girl who had danced for the head of John the Baptist.  In his play, Salome, Oscar Wilde has John the Baptist urging Salome to seek out the forgiveness of Christ; and I believe that is exactly what she did, but Wilde missed the opportunity to assert it as a finished event.

Some will say that Salome is the name of Zebedee's wife, the mother of James and John.  But this is not proven in Scripture.  The four Gospels describe the people present at the Crucifixion, and Zebedee's wife is among them; but cannot be proven to be named Salome.

This is in the memory of Julius Ceaser.

The poem alludes to Sir Thomas Wyatt, who brought the Petrarchan sonnet to England, and who was said to have loved Lady Anne, before and after her disastrous marriage to Henry Tudor.  The poem implies that Wyatt was not the only poet to have loved her; but, overall, somewhat less successful in his effect upon her life.

The plural, possessive "sires'" alludes to both Anne's father and the king---for both of them used her badly and unfairly for their respective lusts (for power and sensual pleasure, respectively).

In the triple epithet describing her feet, the third adjective is obvious; the first suggests her domestic faithfulness, the second her pleasure to please her lover, the speaker.

I seem to hear those gentle
voices calling low out of the long long ago...
That's where I belong, singing a song,
a Song of the South.
Sam Coslow - © 1946 Walt Disney Productions