Setting

The word "Midian" appears only once in the poem, in the poem's title. Yet this word alone is enough to establish the poem's setting: The story takes place in the ancient kingdom of Midian. 

Midian was a kingdom of the Middle East that existed about 1,000 years before Christ.

​​From clues that come later in the poem, we can also infer that the narrator is the king of Midian, and he is speaking to his wife, a woman called Astair.

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