Protus

Among these latter busts we count by scores,     Half-emperors and quarter-emperors,     Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest,     Loric and low-browed Gorgon on the breast,     One loves a baby face, with violets there,     Violets instead of laurel in the hair,     As those were all the little locks could bear.     Now read here. Protus ends a period     Of empery beginning with a god:     Born in the porphyry chamber at Byzant,     Queens by his cradle, proud and ministrant:     And if he quickened breath there, twould like fire     Pantingly through the dim vast realm transpire.     A fame that he was missing spread afar     The world from its four corners, rose in war,     Till he was borne out on a balcony     To pacify the world when it should see.     The captains ranged before him, one, his hand     Made baby points at, gained the chief command.     And day by day more beautiful he grew     In shape, all said, in feature and in hue,     While young Greek sculptors, gazing on the child,     Because with old Greek sculptore reconciled.     Already sages laboured to condense     In easy tomes a lifes experience:     And artists took grave counsel to impart     In one breath and one hand-sweep, all their art     To make his graces prompt as blossoming     Of plentifully-watered palms in spring:     Since well beseems it, whoso mounts the throne,     For beauty, knowledge, strength, should stand alone,     And mortals love the letters of his name.     Stop! Have you turned two pages? Still the same.     New reign, same date. The scribe goes on to say     How that same year, on such a month and day,     John the Pannonian, groundedly believed     A Blacksmiths bastard, whose hard hand reprieved     The Empire from its fate the year before,     Came, had a mind to take the crown, and wore     The same for six years (during which the Huns     Kept off their fingers from us), till his sons     Put something in his liquor and so forth.     Then a new reign. Stay, Take at its just worth     (Subjoins an annotator) what I give     As hearsay. Some think, John let Protus live     And slip away. Tis said, he reached mans age     At some blind northern court; made, first a page,     Then tutor to the children, last, of use     About the hunting-stables. I deduce     He wrote the little tract On worming dogs,     Whereof the name in sundry catalogues     Is extant yet. A Protus of the race     Is rumoured to have died a monk in Thrace,     And if the same, he reached senility.     Heres John the Smiths rough-hammered head.     Great eye,     Gross jaw and griped lips do what granite can     To give you the crown-grasper. What a man!