With words of cheer, and he spake, ‘Take up my war-array,’
To the thralls, and with downcast eyes did these in silence obey.
But his mother, as round her child her arms at the first she had flung,
So clave she, and wept without stint: as the motherless maiden she clung,
Whose forlorn little arms clasp fondly her grey old nurse, when the tide {270}
Cometh up of her woe:—she hath no one to love her nor comfort beside;
And a weary lot is hers ’neath a stepdame’s tyrannous sway,
Who with bitter revilings evil-entreateth her youth alway:
And her heart as she waileth is cramped as by chains in her frenzied despair,
That she cannot sob forth the anguish that struggleth for utterance there: