‘There needs no construing to my parable;

As is the woodbine’s, so the woman’s life:

Look round the forest kings,

And to the stateliest wed thy royal blossom.’

104

Sharp is a father’s pang when comes the hour

In which his love contents his child no more,

And the sweet wonted smile

Fades from his hearthstone to rejoice a stranger’s.

108

But soon from parent love dies thought of self;

Omartes, looking round the Lords of earth,

In young Zariades

Singled the worthiest of his peerless daughter;

112

Scion of that illustrious hero-stem,

Which in great Cyrus bore the loftiest flower

Purpled by Orient susns;

Stretched his vast satrapies, engulphing kingdoms,

116

From tranquil palmgroves fringing Caspian waves,

To the bleak marge of Stormy Tanais;

On Scythia bordering thus,

No foe so dread, and no ally so potent.

120

Perilous boundary-rights by Media claimed

O’er that great stream which, laving Scythian plains,

Europe from Asia guards,

The Persian Prince, in wedding Scythia’s daughter,

124

Might well resign, in pledge of lasting peace.

But ill the project of Omartes pleased

His warlike free-born chiefs,

And ill the wilder tribes of his fierce people;

128

For Scyth and Mede had long been as those winds

Whose very meeting in itself is storm,

Yet the King’s will prevailed,

Confirmed, when wavering, by his trusted Seuthes.

132

He, the fierce leader of the fiercest horde,

Won from the wild by greed of gain and power,

Stood on the bound between

Man social and man savage, dark and massive;

136